


We Will All Be Free (For Now)

by lyonet



Series: Do We Live [6]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, References to anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:43:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10139390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonet/pseuds/lyonet
Summary: “Take it from me, honey,” Queenie says tiredly, “when it comes to what people think, the only thing you can trust less than ‘always’ is ‘never’.”





	1. Chapter 1

The wizarding world does not have orphanages. In this close-knit community, where everybody is at some point down the line related to everybody else and any given person’s grandmother probably tells gleeful stories about how she hexed your great-aunt for stealing a hairbrush in the dormitories at Ilvermorny, it is assumed that when something desperately needs doing there will be someone to step in and do it. When Queenie and Tina’s parents fell sick so suddenly with dragon pox, their mother’s best friend showed up in the fireplace and whisked the girls off to stay in her spare room. When the worst happened (Queenie _knew_ it was coming, she heard what the Healer really thought underneath his soothing non-answers and cried all night, buried in her pillow so that Tina wouldn’t hear) that bedroom became theirs. Their uncle in England, who had never got along with the American branch of the family, paid for the rest of their education.

That’s how it is supposed to be.

But wizards are people, though they like to think they are something bigger than that, and sometimes people just don’t care enough. Some lives have bigger cracks in them than others, big enough to slip through if there’s not a sharp eye on you.

Children with magic are, statistically, rare; whether or not they are willing to admit it, most of the wizarding community considers them much more precious than No-Maj children. Queenie is familiar with the difference between what people are comfortable saying out loud and what they really believe; she learned young how to perfect the unflappable flapper smile, all Cupid’s bow sweetness painted over her mouth, because it was that or start screaming and never stop. She has grown better at seeing nuance since then, at finding the good in the minds she reads and sometimes even bringing it to the surface, but it’s hard to believe the best in people when she’s standing inside a building full of children with nowhere else to go and no magic as their ticket to a better life.

On _that_ night, while Grindelwald was being unmasked and Graves was being found and Picquery was seriously wondering whether the decades of work that went into becoming President were worth it at all (and wasn’t it a marker of how upset she’d been, that Queenie had heard that much from her mind) little Modesty Barebone was hiding in a ruined apartment building. Her older sister and adoptive mother had, by that point, been dead for a matter of hours and her brother had turned monstrous before her eyes, which meant there was nobody left in the world who cared about what happened to her.

When Credence came back to himself enough to try and explain to Tina what he’d done – this in the early hours of the morning, MACUSA being distracted with the rescue of their real Director of Magical Security – Queenie had seen Modesty in his thoughts, gentled directions out of him, taken Jacob by the hand and Apparated over there at top speed, only thinking to tell him what they were doing when they were already on the street outside a run-down tenement with a massive hole in the front. It didn’t take much explaining. The second he heard there was a kid in there, Jacob was moving, and Queenie had to run along behind him casting urgent spells so the whole place wouldn’t fall down on their heads on the way upstairs. _I think that I love you,_ she had thought bewilderedly at Jacob’s back, disappearing ahead of her down the dark hallway. _I love that you are like this._

She didn’t need to listen for Modesty’s mind; in the silent building, they had both heard the hitch of a little girl sobbing herself to sleep. Jacob held out his hand when they found her. “Hey there, kiddo,” he said. “Yikes, it’s cold up here. You want something hot to eat?” Modesty had looked at him with an exhausted emptiness that filled her up like fog, but she let him pick her up. You didn’t have to be a mind-reader to tell that Jacob would look after you.

Queenie couldn’t take her home – that was where Credence was still telling his story to Tina, hands twitching on his knees every time he thought of Graves slapping him, Graves tied to a chair with blood all over his face, how one was a power-hungry stranger and the other was the man he loved (he didn’t know yet that he loved him. He didn’t have any basis for comparison. Queenie did). But Jacob had friends at a diner a few blocks away that opened early, so that was where they went, to feed Modesty hot toast and watch dawn spill through the streets of the city.

In the months since, Credence has made a place for himself. He eats at the bakery, where Queenie and Jacob pile up his plate with new things for him to try; he studies in Tina’s kitchen while she reads the newspapers Newt sends her and writes endless letters to law-makers all over the wizarding world to clarify arcane legal arguments. He sits in on meetings with Tina’s Squibs, too, training them how to use the printing press that Tina has acquired, listening to the passionate arguments over what else they need to do to make the changes they need to see. Sometimes he sleeps at Tina’s, but more often he goes to Graves’ apartment and Queenie pretends not to see the hickeys half-hidden under his collar or the heated memories he can’t help drifting into the morning after.

Credence is going to be all right, someday. His cracks are closing.

Modesty’s are not.

As orphanages go, this is a good place. Queenie made sure. The staff here are harried but their thoughts are well-intentioned, for the most part. (Queenie aims a mild jinx at the one inclined to yell at the children. She’ll get a sore throat every time she does it for the next week.) The children are well-fed, with clean clothes and no bruises hidden underneath. When Queenie and Credence are led to the room Modesty shares with three other girls, she is alone, sitting primly on her bed.

Credence visits her twice a week. He comes back each time quietly loathing himself, so Queenie is here to soften the broken space between them. She’s good at that.

“Hiya, honey,” she says, sitting on the bed opposite. “How’s it going?”

Modesty is suspicious. She’s bright; she knows that Queenie is a witch and her head is full of the wildly inaccurate hearsay that Mary-Lou drilled into all those poor children as gospel, but Modesty is not afraid. Not of Queenie, at least. She reluctantly admires her hair. Modesty has always wanted curls. When Queenie offers a sticky-sweet pastry, Modesty takes it with a polite little ‘thank you, ma’am’ and gets a bit dizzy on the shock of sugar.

Credence hovers. He wants to sit on the bed next to his sister but is unsure of his welcome, and rightly so. Modesty is afraid of _him_. She’s furious that he left her to live here among strangers. She’s worried he’s going to Hell. She has nightmares about Credence transforming into howling smoke and tearing her apart, and other nights she dreams of Mary-Lou dragging him into a fiery pit.

She is still more frightened of her dead mother than she could ever be of her strange brother.

Tina and Graves are the only Aurors who knew about her, and neither of them are going to make a report about it, which means Modesty occupies the same dubious territory that Jacob does: neither within the wizarding world nor outside it. Unlike Jacob, Modesty does not _want_ to be a part of it. But she does want her brother back.

“Hey, scoot over,” Queenie says. “You want me to curl your hair? I fixed Credence’s, you know.”

Credence smiles unthinkingly. For the first time, small and wary, Modesty smiles back.

*

_Secrets Queenie has NOT shared, thank you very much Tina, because she has a goddamn moral compass when she needs one:_

  * _Jacob has been in love before. He still thinks about his former fiancee sometimes. Not because he wants her, just the way you might poke at a fading bruise and try to remember how you got it._
  * _He doesn’t always like Queenie reading his thoughts. He chooses not to complain about it. This is who she is, take it or leave it, and leaving has not once crossed his mind._
  * _Percival Graves’ head is a fortress. Nobody is ever getting in there again. Queenie sees the way he goes tense instead of flinching when something brushes against his leg unexpectedly, and how he reaches for his wand when he hears certain seemingly innocuous spells. She doesn’t want to be inside his head. She wishes sometimes that she could get him out of it._
  * _Credence still thinks of himself as a sinner. He has had so little experience with pleasure, of any kind, that it all feels like the wildest indulgence – to wear clothes that fit him properly, to eat as much as he wants, to be kissed and fucked and held and talked to softly under the covers in the quiet hours of the night. All things he’s not sure he deserves._
  * _But he’s starting to think that maybe he does deserve them._
  * _Queenie occasionally wishes he could fantasise a bit quieter when he’s within her mental hearing range, but is impressed by the creativity._
  * _One of her regular customers is pregnant and is keeping it to herself while she gets used to the idea. Queenie has crocheted a pair of booties, now wrapped up in her sock drawer, in preparation for the announcement._
  * _Queenie’s neighbour across the street from the bakery keeps trying to guess whether she is Jewish. He hopes she isn’t._
  * _President Picquery’s mind is a lake. There’s a lot going on under the surface, but you’ll drown trying to get at it. Queenie catches the odd reflection. Picquery doesn’t know what to make of the Goldsteins but it has not escaped her that Tina is the only Auror in the department who can keep up with Graves these days._
  * _Tina gets distracted whenever Picquery looks her in the eye and spends her nights writing letters to Newt. She knows the first one is a crush. She doesn’t know what the second one is. Queenie does, but won’t give her opinion until it’s asked for._
  * _It probably won’t be asked for, because Tina has no time to think about the feelings she might or might not have right now. She meets up with her group of Squibs three times a week. Her folder of notes is growing thicker every day with court cases that proved an exception to the law, statistics on how many witches and wizards come from non-magical families and studies on the side effects of Obliviation. The law is a wall that America’s wizarding community has built around itself and Tina is determined to knock in a new door._
  * _She is probably going to fail. But Queenie’s not going to tell her that either._



*

“Thank you,” Credence says, when they’re standing on the pavement outside the orphanage. “Modesty was happy to see you.”

“She was happy to see you too,” Queenie tells him, and lets him search her face doubtfully to check if it’s true. “It’ll take a while for her to believe you’re going to stay you, is all. She needs time.”

“Not if she gets adopted.” Credence pushes his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching instinctively. He looks up at the building behind them, his eyes skimming across the upstairs windows. “That’s what happened before. Ma brought her to the church.”

Queenie is not used to feeling helpless. No witch with use of her wand is meant to feel like that. “I know it doesn’t mean much, honey,” she says, “but I promise, that’s not going to happen again.”

He flashes her one of his quick, lovely smiles and takes her arm without her having to offer first. Credence is not a hurting boy any more. He stands with his back straight these days, sharp cheekbones a little softened by months of square meals and the unfashionably long hair that curls against his jaw, enough to make him finally look his age. He keeps his wand in his waistcoat pocket, as Graves does, rubbing his thumb against the handle when he feels out of his depth, which is less often than it used to be. He’s thinking of Graves now, the usual reflexive little tug of longing to be wherever the man he loves is, to be making himself useful to Graves, indispensable, unleaveable.

He’s not hurting. That is not the same thing as healed. There is a tension running through New York, No-Majs and wizards alike, and Credence and Queenie are two of the very few people in the city who know what it means. Gellert Grindelwald is, at this moment, locked deep beneath the MACUSA building – within the next fortnight, he will be brought to the surface and handed off to British Aurors who think they know what he is capable of.

Queenie squeezes Credence’s arm, pulling him closer against her side, and on the way home she stops at a florist to buy herself a bouquet of pink roses. She tucks a bud into Credence’s buttonhole. “For your Mr Graves,” she says, grinning when he blushes.

When they get back to the bakery, Credence goes into the kitchen to check if there are deliveries to be made. Queenie heads upstairs. The scent of the roses quickly fills the apartment, mingling with the smell of fresh bread and spice that rises up through the floor and clings to Jacob’s skin. She can hear him singing in the kitchen, something bright and cheerful that he heard on the radio, missing half the words. Underneath the song she can hear him ruminating on a recipe he’s been wanting to try, one of those marvels passed down from his grandmother that are devilishly tricky to replicate. His mind is peaceable, open – he knows she’s home and that makes him happy. It’s very easy to make Jacob happy. It’s the mood he’s made for. Being around his mind is like being in a room that is always warm.

Queenie hangs up her coat and freshens her make-up before going down to take over the store counter. Customers love her. She always knows just what they want. She’d like the job better if she could use magic to save time – wrapping everything by hand is so _pointless_ – but everybody who comes in leaves with a smile, and they don’t notice that magic at all.

Credence finishes deliveries by five. He excuses himself from dinner; he has plans with Graves that involve steak at an expensive restaurant, followed by getting to bed very early. Tina is holding one of her meetings with the Squibs tonight, finalising the contents for this week’s edition of the _Firebrand,_ so it’s a quiet night at the bakery, Queenie and Jacob alone together for once. She supposes it is a good time to have uninhibited sex all over the kitchen table, but the truth is that sex doesn’t mean quite the same thing to Queenie that it does to other people – her ideas of true intimacy don’t involve bodies much at all.

Queenie likes to look pretty as much as the next girl (maybe a bit more than the next girl, especially if that next girl is Tina) and she’s used to admiration; she’s also used to the edge of dismay, a petty sort of betrayal, when men realise the vivid colour on her lips does actually come out of a tube and her hair needs a lot of attention to look as good as it does. Mind-reading has, all things considered, been kind of terrible for her love life. She can’t lose herself in a mind that keeps all its half-formed notions of her firmly in the shallows, that puts her breasts and parted lips into a separate category from her tired feet and tentative hopes.

The nice things Jacob does to her with his mouth are just a welcome bonus to the way he lets her into his head, accepting what she is with the same wondering grace that he accepted the existence of an entire hidden wizarding community, letting her walk about in his thoughts and carry on whole conversations without saying a word out loud. If there is a limit to how much strangeness Jacob will tolerate from people he loves, Queenie hasn’t found it yet.

They melt prodigious quantities of cheese on toast and eat it on the rug in front of the fireplace, like children, in their socked feet. She wears oversized pajama stolen from his side of the dresser and settles in comfortably with her head pillowed on his knee while they swap stories of their schooldays.

“That’s so _weird,_ ” she says, fascinated, when he lists his classes. “We’re supposed to know how to read and do sums before we go to school. That’s why we go at eleven. Well,” she amends, “we go at eleven because that’s how Hogwarts does it and the Ilvermorny founders were all about doing things the mother country way. That hasn’t changed too much. The place got turned into a _castle_ , you know? But there’s no time to fuss about math when you’ve got to master Transfiguration. I always sucked at that one. Better at Charms.”

That makes Jacob laugh. There are things about the wizarding world he can’t take seriously yet, and anything called a ‘charm’ is one of them. It makes him think of batting eyelashes and jewellery. Queenie would find that more irritating if she didn’t see how guilty she is of doing the same thing. It’s very hard for her to think of a gun as a real weapon – she can think of ten spells off the top of her head to disable one – but the unspoken terror Jacob has of them is forcing her to change her mind.

Their voices turn softer, talking about things that are easier to say by half-light: what it was like after her parents died, when Tina’s grief was a wailing echo that Queenie couldn’t escape. How Jacob felt, coming home from the war and realising that all the fighting hadn’t earned him a place in the world. He is trying very hard not to think about the things he saw in Europe and Queenie does her best not to look, though she catches fragments: barbed wire and mud, the roar of an explosion. A lot of blood. It’s always hardest not to hear when someone is hurting.

For the second time in one day, Queenie feels helpless. She hopes she won’t have to get used to it.

*

_Questions that Queenie would like answered, because she is not actually omnipotent:_

  * _What is Tina thinking right now? It is a constant nagging distraction, being unable to answer that question. It reminds Queenie of the gaping absence left behind when her parents’ fond, familiar minds were gone forever, and while it is not at all the same (it must not ever be the same) it makes Queenie anxious. She makes Tina eat dinner at the bakery as many times a week as she can, but when she’s not here, she is in Queenie’s thoughts. Is she out on a raid? Graves isn’t with her, he’s at home with Credence tonight, so who is watching Tina’s back?_
  * _What was Jacob’s fiancee THINKING._
  * _What the hell is so special about Hogwarts? If Queenie had not gone to Ilvermorny, she’d have picked Beauxbatons. The food is supposed to be amazing._
  * _Can Queenie safely blame the Niffler for her favourite earrings going missing? It is probably fairer to blame Graves, who genuinely does not care about the incidental disappearance of other people’s possessions provided that the Niffler keeps sniffing out suspicious items throughout the MACUSA. They have made two arrests based on intel from stolen wands. The Niffler has more job security than most of the humans._
  * _Is Newt as lonely as he sounds?_
  * _Would he come back to New York if Tina asked him?_
  * _Would she ask him?_
  * _Is Seraphina Picquery unaware of how Tina feels about her, or is she politely ignoring those feelings until they go away, the way Graves did?_
  * _Would the No-Majs start a war if they knew people like Queenie existed?_
  * _Who would win?_
  * _She does not want an answer to that one._



_*_

 

It is three in the morning when Queenie wakes from a sound sleep with her heart in her throat, too disoriented to understand at once why. The bedroom is quiet. Jacob is asleep beside her, breathing soft and even. The wards have sounded no warnings. But Queenie’s instinct tells her that something is very wrong, and she always trusts her instinct.

She pushes off the covers, going to the window. That’s when she sees them, cloaked figures in the street, stark white faces turned up towards her, right before a sheet of flame roars up around the bakery.

It does not burn.

The wards were made by Tina at her fiercest and Graves at his most paranoid – by Newt, who was used to warding against dragonfire and phoenix rebirth, and by Queenie herself, who had been inside Grindelwald’s head and seen very clearly what she needed to protect herself against. These walls could withstand an inferno. That is what they are now being asked to do. Green flames lick high against the windows; Queenie can feel the heat of it against her palms through the glass. The minds behind the curses are loud enough that they woke her from sleep, vicious enough to raise an ache behind her temples that sends her stumbling backward with her hands clamped uselessly over her ears. It _hurts._

She becomes aware that Jacob has woken too when he grabs her arm, rough with urgency. “We have to get out!” he’s shouting. “Queenie, Queenie, please, we have to move!”

“We can’t. It won’t. The fire can’t catch,” Queenie gets out. She’s trying to make sense of the minds outside and it is taking all of her concentration. Most are unknown. A few are vaguely familiar, people she has met before but not well-known enough to put a name to. If she listens closely, she can hear the precise tones of their hatred. _Blood-traitor. No-Maj whore._ Things she hears every time she sets foot in the MACUSA these days. Most of the hate, though, is for Jacob. They want to make an example.

Queenie lets out a sobbing breath, her legs trembling so badly she can hardly stay upright, and Jacob is still pulling at her. He’s panicking, which means she can’t. She twists around to hold his wrists, sending the biggest wave of calm she can muster into his mind. “We’re safe in here,” she says, hoping it’s true. “Help me. Please. I need to listen.”

“What’s happening?” He takes her hands, trying to see what is hurting her. He doesn’t believe her about the house being safe; or rather, he trusts her, but the fire is more real than her words. In Jacob’s world, fires always burn.

Not in Queenie’s. In her world, it’s light you need to be afraid of.

*

_Reasons why someone might attack a bakery in the middle of the night:_

  * _There is a Polish name on the sign out the front. Most wizards and witches like to say that they don’t care where anyone comes from as long as they can use a wand. This is not true._
  * _Queenie is not the most popular witch in America these days. Her old friends don’t meet her eye when they see her. She can hear that they feel betrayed. The feeling is mutual._
  * _She fell in love with – and more importantly, chose to live and start a business with – a No-Maj who is also now the exception to a law that most wizards still support. There are plenty of people out there who see her happy ending as heralding in the End Times. The wizarding world has its own Mary-Lou Barebones._
  * _Queenie knows other people’s secrets, and they are more aware of that now._
  * _Because she interrogated Grindelwald, wrenching hidden things right out of his head. He took it personally._
  * _Because if he wants revenge on the people who caught him, Queenie is the easiest target._
  * _No. Jacob is._



*

The first surge of red against the window makes Queenie stand up, catching at the bed frame for support. Someone is out there wielding Stunning Spells and she knows _exactly_ who would find it reasonable to try and take on a mob alone.

“Tina,” Queenie breathes, already making for the door, wand in hand. Jacob is on her heels, confused and terrified but not about to let her out of his sight. “Stay here,” she begs him, though she can feel how useless it is to ask. She wishes he could understand: this is about him. This is about people who look at him and see a lesser creature than themselves, who has no right to be loved by a witch or befriended by wizards.

“Stay here,” she says again, squeezing Jacob’s hand with her free one. “Please. There’s nothing you can do, but Tina’s out there and she needs me.”

She doesn’t give him the chance to argue, Apparating into the alley so she can slip around to the street unseen. She’s no duellist, she’s never got the hang of curses, but she gets lucky, surprising the first wizard she sees with a Stunning spell. Tina is on the other side of the street, duelling with two witches at once, two more cloaked figures sprawled on the pavement behind her; she’s pale-faced and her left sleeve is charred where a curse came too close to home. The numbers are against them, and should be worse. Queenie knows what Tina doesn’t – there are more enemies out there who just haven’t shown themselves yet.

Another surge of flame sweeps across the house. So far the attack has been fairly quiet, but very soon somebody is going to wake up and _see_ …

The crack of another Apparition makes Queenie start badly. Mr Graves is storming forward before he’s even fully coalesced and behind him is Credence, both of them wearing uncannily similar murderous expressions. They are headed for Tina but a wizard wearing a blank white mask Apparates into their path, green light surging from his wand. “Avada Kedavra!”

The curse gets nowhere near Graves, who lashes his wand down with a contemptuous flick of his wrist and brings the wizard to his knees with a second whipcrack motion, dark cord binding him head to foot. Two more masked figures emerge from the shadows of a doorway across the street. Credence stabs his wand at them without a trace of finesse; the brute force of his wordless, instinctive spell has them staggering back, blood dripping from under the masks. Tina gives a cry, her arm bending abruptly backward at a horrible angle, and Graves turns towards her, but her assailants are already gone and the two Credence attacked vanish at the same time. The only ones left are unconscious in the street.

“Queenie,” Credence says, wild-eyed. “Queenie, are you – ”

“ _Queenie._ ” Jacob’s voice is too loud and his face is too pale; the bakery door hangs open as he runs across the street, reaching for her. Queenie only realises she is shaking as she falls against him, allowing herself this moment’s comfort.

A third voice speaks her name and she looks up at Graves, who is still focused on the task at hand. “Who saw?” he asks. Behind him, Tina is busy putting binding spells on the wizards she Stunned, her arm hanging awkwardly at her side.

Queenie spreads out her awareness, gently teasing open the minds of her neighbours as if she is lifting aside a curtain. It’s easy to zero in on wakefulness, on fear, and with a bit more concentration she can give Graves exact locations. He presses a hand briefly against Credence’s back, firm and reassuring, then walks off alone to deal with it.

Queenie goes to Tina, who has taken a few steps away from her captive to sit on a low wall and is tapping angrily at her broken arm with her wand in the wrong hand. Queenie sits beside her and tugs the wand away, summoning up a potion from the very well-stocked first aid kit under her kitchen sink. It’s the one she put together when Tina first joined the Aurors and came home with a new and exciting injury every week, and Tina grimaces with familiarity at the bulbous green bottle before she swallows a mouthful of the contents.

“I was asleep when I felt the wards go off,” she says thickly. There are tears dripping down her face/ She hasn’t noticed yet. “I thought – when I got here and I saw the fire, I thought it was too late.”

“The wards held.” Queenie rests her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m fine. Jacob’s fine.”

“You’re not.”

“Am too.”

“Are not,” Tina says, but she laughs a little as she says it and she gets out a handkerchief to blow her nose. “We’re staying the rest of the night with you, all of us, so you know.”

“They’re not coming back,” Queenie says quietly. “Not tonight, anyway.”

“Did you recognise anyone?”

“I didn’t get names.” Queenie looks up at the second storey window of the house across the street and sees a shadow move at the window; Graves is nothing if not efficient at his work. She will be safe from the frightened eyes of her neighbours, at least. “I’d know them,” she says, “if I met them again.”

 _We’re staying with you,_ Tina thinks. This time, Queenie doesn’t argue.

*

 

_People who are still talking to Queenie even though she is a blood traitor who wants to marry a No-Maj and is, in the meantime, living in happy sin with him:_

  * _Tina. Tina is critical by nature and anxious about everything, and she is always, always on Queenie’s side._
  * _Jacob, obviously, though he doesn’t really count – certainly not to any of the people who_ aren’t _talking to Queenie. He does want to get married, though._
  * _Newt, who sends less letters now because he is stuck into writing that book of his, but makes up for it by sending badly typed chapters for proofreading to anyone who will read them. That means Tina, usually, but Queenie tries to make some time. They all agreed that Graves had to read the one about Nifflers and Credence talked him into it with the laughing eyes that Graves does not ever say no to._
  * _Graves doesn’t talk much when he’s not at work, and he saves nearly all of his good humour for Credence, but he likes Queenie; she doesn’t need to read his mind to know that. He spends time with her. He does not waste time on people he thinks aren’t worth it._
  * _Credence loves her. He’s also a bit in awe of her. She’s working on that._
  * _Magda Czerny, the honorary aunt who gave up her spare room to two bewildered orphans so many years ago. She never married, making a living as a dressmaker to wizarding high society; she is a proudly terrible cook but she taught Queenie how to put on make-up for every occasion and hold herself like the queen her parents named her. When Queenie told Magda about Jacob, Magda had stared at her for a full minute, smoking a cigarette down to the filter, before finally saying, “Well, at least he’s Polish.”_
  * _Tina’s Squibs: Theobald, Ling, Sigourney and Sarah. They are young, fiery; they grew up between two worlds, straddling a line that keeps trying to buck them off. “You’re like us now,” Sigourney said once, blunt and hard, the only way she ever is. “They don’t want you either.” Queenie heard an echo Sigourney did not mean to send, of so many disappointed voices, and took no offence._
  * _How could she? She is wanted by everybody who really matters._



*

Queenie sleeps like a log. It’s more that can be said of literally anybody else, but the hum of familiar minds around her is the best possible comfort. She comes downstairs early the next morning to find Graves and Jacob alone in the kitchen, eyeing one other doubtfully over cups of coffee. Jacob is considering another try at conversation, his third, when he hears Queenie come in and turns to her gratefully.

“How are you holding up, honey?” he asks, grabbing at the coffee pot to pour her a cup. “You hungry? I thought I’d make pancakes, but if you’re in the mood for something else…”

Jacob would solve all the world’s problems with yeast and sugar if he could. “Sounds perfect,” Queenie assures him. She lifts an eyebrow at Graves, unable to resist needling him just a tiny bit. “You like pancakes, sweetheart?”

He stares at her coffee like he’s trying to drink it with his eyes. “Sure.”

“Where’s Tina? And Credence?” Queenie asks, while Jacob cracks eggs. She reaches out for them as Graves answers, just to be sure. Credence is upstairs, in a light, troubled sleep; Tina is outside, checking for traces of last night’s duelling in the daylight. She has just been ambushed by the chatty old man who lives two doors down and likes to tell people about his many health complaints. _How do you put up with this? s_ he thinks in Queenie’s general direction, exasperated.

 _He’s lonely and bored,_ Queenie thinks back, though Tina won’t hear her. Queenie sees too much, always has. The best defences she’s found are kindness and a forceful optimism. She doesn’t know what to do with Jacob’s fear and Credence’s dark dreams and Tina’s fury – even Graves’ wary concern. She wants to calm them down, brush it off, as she does with the slights and the insults that come her way so often these days. But she can’t. This is different. Those wizards came after her home; they came after Jacob. They were after blood.

And Queenie would know them, if she met them again.

When Tina comes back in, she and Graves go around renewing the wards so strongly that Queenie’s ears pop and Credence wakes with a shock. He calms at the sound of Graves’ murmured spellcasting in the hall and Tina’s muffled swearing as she stubs her toe on an awkwardly placed chair. Jacob hears Credence on the stairs and gets up to pour more batter into the pan, finding a tenuous calm in the bubbling butter and crisping pancakes. The neighbours go about their days, peacefully unaware of green fire and witchcraft in the streets.

Queenie doesn’t realise how wide she’s stretched herself until Tina is waving a hand under her nose, trying to say goodbye. “Hear anything?” she asks, tensely.

“You need a potion for that toe?”

“I’ll find out who they are,” Tina promises. “I’ll lock them up myself.”

Queenie smiles. She doesn’t believe a lot of promises and she doesn’t believe this one, but it’s sweet just the same. “Go get ‘em, Teenie.”

Graves is already gone. Tina follows him, Disapparating in the alley. The three of them who are left sit around the table in silence for a while, nursing their coffee cups. Jacob does not have the heart to open the bakery today and besides, the exhaustion of a night’s terrified sleeplessness is beginning to hit – the way he’s feeling now, he’ll be asleep within minutes, and Queenie thinks he will be dreaming again of barbed wire and mud. Her fingers twitch on the table and a little tremor passes through the plates and cutlery, as if she has banged both hands down hard.

Ever since he woke up, Credence has been following a train of thought that is all about the very worst things that could happen and Queenie has been doing her best to stay well out of it, so she jumps as much as Jacob when Credence’s head snaps up and he says, “Modesty. Is she – ”

Queenie throws out her hand, summoning over her coat and hat. Jacob blinks; sometimes she forgets that other people need the rest of sentences. “They shouldn’t know about Modesty,” she says, catching his hand and reaching over to seize Credence’s too, “but better to check, huh?”

She’s not as careful as she should be. The three of them Apparate into the cupboard under the orphanage’s stairs, which is dark and confusing and not nearly big enough for three full-grown people. There’s a dreadful clatter when they open the door and a collection of mops and brushes try to make it out with them. Credence hurries for the stairs and Queenie is still clutching onto both his and Jacob’s hands, feet moving on instinct, mind reaching out for Modesty. They shouldn’t have left her here. It’s not safe.

Nowhere is safe, though, is it? Not for them.

In the upstairs hallway the matron tries to stop them, rightfully suspicious. Jacob gabbles something about a forgotten birthday and brotherly guilt that gets them past with only a frown aimed at their backs, and just around the corner Queenie stops in her tracks with a gasp of relief. “She’s here, she’s safe,” she says. She leads the way after that, up more stairs to the older children’s playroom, where Modesty is…hitting one of the other girls with a large book and a lot of rage.

“Don’t you ever say that again!” she yells. “You’re a filthy rotten sinner!”

Credence is shocked into an open-mouthed stare. He’s never seen Modesty like this and has not the least idea of what to do about it. Queenie just wades in and takes the book away, which makes Modesty look up, red-cheeked and panting, and gives the other girl a chance to run for it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Modesty says, the display of emotion quickly folding itself up behind the stolid primness she wears like the ugly dresses from the old church. She looks at Credence and Jacob, looks back at Queenie and stands up straight with her hands folded in front of her. She is expecting prompt punishment, because that’s what _happens_.

Queenie should never have left her here.

“Come with me, Modesty,” she says, putting down the book and holding out her hand.

“No,” Modesty says immediately.

Queenie smiles. “Don’t trust a witch, huh?”

“No.”

“Smart girl,” Queenie says. “People can be tricksy. Tell you what. How about you take Jacob’s hand and we go out for a bit? He’s not a witch, you know.”

“Witches aren’t bad,” Credence adds, worried and a little angry. “Modesty, you know better.”

She really doesn’t. When did she have an opportunity to learn? Modesty gives Credence a hard look but consents to take Jacob’s hand. Queenie works out a route through the building that gets them out without encountering anyone who will ask inconvenient questions and leads the way into the first diner she sees. In her experience, it’s a rare child who can’t be softened at least a little bit by food.

Modesty is determined to be difficult. It takes a great deal of coaxing (mostly from Jacob) to get her to choose anything off the menu and once the dish of pie arrives she stirs cream around the plate with her spoon, not actually eating, though she very much wants to. Credence is staring at her with wide, mournful eyes, which would be enough to put anybody off their food and possibly sink into a chasm of guilt, but Modesty is made of stronger stuff than that and just glares back. She’s not a charming child. Why should she be? She must have lost count of abandonments.

“Oh, give it here then,” Queenie says, and takes a mouthful of the pie with her coffee spoon. “If you want to go into business scaring bullies, Modesty, you’ve got to keep up your strength.”

“You don’t know anything,” Modesty says, with conviction.

Queenie smiles again, wide and warm. “Her name is Elsie and she likes to go around telling horrible stories about you, probably because she’s jealous that your brother comes to visit and hers doesn’t. This time she told a lie about Credence and you’re scared in case it’s not a lie, because how would you know any more? You just wanted her to shut up, but she wouldn’t.” And Modesty knows how to be scary when she wants; she learned a lot growing up in that house. “It’s not true, by the way. Credence is not wanted by the police and Australia doesn’t take convicts any more. I don’t think koala bears eat people, either, so that’s something else you don’t need to worry about.”

Credence is left stunned all over again. Jacob pats him on the arm with a sort of ‘these things do keep happening, don’t they’ solidarity.

“I knew that,” Modesty snaps, but she’s shrunk back in her seat.

“I’m an unusual witch, Modesty,” Queenie says, matter-of-fact. “And Credence here, he’s a pretty unusual wizard. A lot of people don’t like what we are. Not just No-Majs like your Ma – she didn’t like anybody, did she? – but some other witches and wizards too.”

“Don’t talk about Ma,” Modesty mutters, without conviction.

“Don’t tell me I don’t know bullies, then,” Queenie says reasonably.

She leans back to sip delicately at her coffee. Modesty frowns at the pie for another moment before giving in and scooping up a bite. “What do you want, anyway?” she asks, once she’s scraped the plate clean.

“Really, honey, it’s about what you want.” Queenie gestures to Credence. “You can’t live with your brother yet. Not ‘cause he doesn’t want you, he just doesn’t have a place of his own. He’s had a lot to figure out these past few months, you know. So here’s how it is, you can stay with me and Jacob instead.” She crosses her fingers under the table as she hears Jacob’s flare of surprise. Probably she should have waited to talk to him about that invitation before extending it. “We’ve got a bit of space, we’d be happy to have you,” she pushes on, as it is too late to do anything else. “But we’re not married, and I’m a witch, and my sister’s a witch too. We don’t live our lives anything like what your Ma would approve. You could stay in the orphanage instead, wait to get adopted, start over new with the No-Majs.”

“What are No-Majs?” Modesty asks. She’s twisting a napkin fretfully instead of wiping her face with it, brimming over with distrust.

“People who don’t have magic, like you and Jacob. They call you Muggles across the pond.”

“Credence isn’t a No-Maj,” Modesty says, almost accusingly. Credence flinches a little.

“I’m still your brother,” he says, but not like he really expects her to agree. Queenie aches for him. It shouldn’t be this hard; it _shouldn’t._

There is nothing she can do, right now, to make it less hard, so she just says, “Let’s get you back before the matron calls the cops. You don’t have to make up your mind straight away.”

“You don’t want me,” Modesty hisses. “Why would you want me? I’m not like you.”

“Making friends isn’t a game of Snap, sweetheart. You don’t have to be just the same.”

Modesty doesn’t believe that – she knows perfectly well how people are divided up like toys in a store, some worth more to the world than others, but she also knows she doesn’t _like_ it, an amorphous doubt that (given a little education) is capable of blossoming into fully-fledged stubborness that would put Tina’s to shame. The walk back to the orphanage is quiet. Modesty goes inside without waving or looking back.

“I’m always going to be a freak to her,” Credence says quietly, watching her go. He is so sad Queenie can feel it like a frosty breath of winter coming off his hunched shoulders.

“Take it from me, honey,” she says tiredly, “when it comes to what people think, the only thing you can trust less than ‘always’ is ‘never’.”

*

 

_Reasons why nobody in their right mind should date somebody who can read it:_

  * _You don’t have secrets any more. You can’t tell lies._
  * _(The mind-reader gets to have secrets.)_
  * _(And lies.)_
  * _You are with somebody who knows you better than you could ever know them._
  * _Better than you know yourself, perhaps – at least, with more perspective._
  * _They hear what you’re thinking when you’re frustrated or angry, and it doesn’t matter that you didn’t say it, that you didn’t mean it. It’s out there just the same._
  * _They know everything._
  * _And you don’t._



*

“I’m sorry,” Queenie says penitently. “I should have asked first.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Jacob says for the second time, which is mostly true. For one thing, Jacob likes children and likes Modesty specifically, and would be happier to have her living at the bakery than staying at the orphanage. For another thing, he is no better at holding onto anger than Queenie is, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t wishing that she would go away for a while and let him think.

 _I’m sorry,_ Queenie thinks, but it won’t help to say it again; in fact, it would probably make things worse, a reminder that his private exasperation is being broadcast into her head like a radio show.

Credence’s thoughts are no reprieve, having sunk into memories of his childhood, of both the sisters he has failed one way or another. Modesty’s distrust has hit him somewhere raw. Credence thinks of Mr Graves’ arm around his waist, one large hand resting firmly on his hip like a paperweight to keep all the fragile pages of Credence’s new life from whirling away, and despairs of Modesty accepting anything about him at all. There’s no comfort Queenie can give him there. Modesty is so young. She doesn’t _know_ what she thinks yet, not properly – for all Queenie can say, Credence is right, though she hopes very much that he isn’t.

Queenie decides to go for a walk.

The afternoon is cool and clear, quite pleasant. A young couple walk past with their dogs, arguing spiritedly about a vacation they both know perfectly well isn’t going to happen because they can’t afford it. A man going the other way is focused entirely on the case of cigarettes he left at home. Queenie walks briskly. She has a sudden hankering to be out of the No-Maj world for a bit, to go somewhere reassuringly magical, where passersby think of spells and Quidditch matches and how their children are doing at Ilvermorny. But she doesn’t go to those places much any more and after last night, she’s not sure when she’ll ever go back.

She stops in the street with her hands in her pockets and her head tipped back, staring up into the cloudy blue sky while New York goes about its business around her. She wonders what it is like to go through life when every person you meet is unknowable, even the ones you love best. It sounds…restful.

It sounds like dying.

*

_Things that people have not told Queenie (but that she knows anyway):_

  * _Modesty does not want to live with Queenie and Jacob. She doesn’t want to live with Credence. She wants, more than anything, to have a place that is entirely her own – somewhere far off the ground with only sky outside the window._
  * _She also wants a pony._
  * _Credence wants to live with Mr Graves. It has nothing to do with the apartment, which could only have less personality if it was stripped completely bare. It has everything to do with late nights wrapped in cool sheets and warm limbs, and waking up to the Niffler nipping hopefully at his fingers. It has everything to do with feeling safe._
  * _There are not many places where Credence feels safe. Less, now._
  * _Tina believes that Grindelwald will escape, unless she does something about it._
  * _There is really nothing she can do about it. Not even Picquery could stop this happening, though she tried with everything she had; she will be shuffled out of the presidency as soon as the pureblood families of New York can swing a few extra votes against her._
  * _They will lose Graves at the same time, and are probably grateful for it._
  * _They call Grindelwald extreme and his methods crude. They say they are not his followers._
  * _They are lying._



_*_

Tina comes over again that night, Apparating in a flurry of frustrated, unhappy thoughts, and Graves is with her again, which is a bad sign. He does not often visit uninvited, beyond stopping by to walk Credence over to his place. Jacob looks at Queenie’s face, sighs, and gets more cups out of the dresser.

When Tina and Graves come in they have a look to them like they have spent the whole day wringing answers out reluctant throats by hand. “Well, now we know what got Grindelwald’s goons so excited,” is the first thing Tina says, her voice bitter. “The transfer is happening tomorrow. The British Aurors are already here.”

“The Minister for Magic has sent good people,” Graves adds. “I knew some of them in the war, others by reputation, and from what I can tell they’re all who they say they are.”

“In other words, you set the Niffler on them,” Tina snorts. She takes the tea Jacob gives her with relief and sits on the edge of the table, too wound up to take a chair. “I’ll have to write to Newt, ask how that little beast does it.”

“I have a favour to ask, Queenie,” Graves begins.

“I’m all for it, but it’s really up to Credence, don’t you think?”

Graves pauses with his own cup halfway to his lips and Queenie smiles at him reassuringly. “I didn’t get that out of your head, sugar. If you can convince Credence to stay home for the next few days, I’ll breathe easier too.”

Whether Grindelwald really has hopes of using Credence somehow is a question Queenie can’t answer without delving deep into the man’s head again, which is pretty much the last thing she ever intends to do, but she is certain that he would find enough leverage to make Credence obey if he ever got the chance to make the threats in person. Queenie doesn’t have to guess what Grindelwald would do to her; he visualised it clearly enough during the interrogation.

Graves is eyeing her speculatively, the way he does sometimes when he’s having daydreams about recruitment. She shakes her head at him – no, she is not going to stripmine the thoughts of MACUSA’s enemies, not even if he asks very nicely – and takes a sip of tea, sweet with a splash of milk, the way she likes it.

Credence notes the tense atmosphere the minute he comes through the door and is quick to guess what it means. He sits down carefully while Tina explains. “Can they hold him?” he asks at last.

“Maybe,” Graves concedes. “I’d have more confidence in them if they had less in themselves.”

“He doesn’t have a wand,” Tina chips in. “Apparating is _much_ harder without.”

“He doesn’t need a wand,” Credence says quietly.

“He’s powerful, not invulnerable,” Graves says, ducking his head a little so that he can meet Credence’s eyes. “We will keep you safe.”

Credence’s hands clench against his thighs. “Who keeps you safe?”

“Well, these British Aurors should be good for _something._ ”

“After how much talking they expected us to sit through, they’d better be,” Tina says, sniffing hopefully when Jacob goes over to the stove to see to dinner. “The MACUSA is ready this time.”

Credence is not particularly reassured. He has faith in Graves and Tina, much less in the authorities, wizarding and No-Maj alike. He picks at his dinner and Queenie is forcefully reminded of his sister stirring cream on her plate. Modesty can’t stay in the orphanage while they wait to see if Grindelwald is really going to be escorted off American soil without incident. Queenie will have to go back tomorrow morning and see if she has made up her mind, and think of some pretty good persuasion if Modesty doesn’t want to go anywhere with her. First, though, she needs to talk that one out with Jacob.

“You’re right,” Jacob says, when dinner is over and they are washing dishes in the kitchen together, alone for a few minutes. “She can’t stay there.”

“Are you okay with her living here? I get it, if you’re not. I didn’t give you much time to think.”

“You didn’t give me any time to think, Queenie.” Jacob sighs. He reaches up to gently rub one of Queenie’s curls between finger and thumb. “It’s okay. This is important. If we can give the kid a home, we should give the kid a home. Just…ask me, huh? When it comes to these things. Odds are good I’ll say yes! I just want to get the word out. I’m funny like that.”

“I will,” Queenie promises. “When I was living with Tina, you know, she made the big decisions and I always knew what she was planning, we didn’t need to talk about this stuff. I am trying. I’ll try harder.”

She leaned her forehead against his, allowed in so easily.

“Hey, honey?” He took her hands, rubbing them as gently as he had done her hair. “I’m not going anywhere. This, right here, is the best I’ve ever had it. I’m not the smartest guy in the room, but I’m not so dumb I’m gonna let you go.”

“You know, I’ve walked into meetings where every guy thought he was the smartest one there,” Queenie says. “Anyone can be smart. You know how many men I’ve met who’d qualify for kindest guy in the room?” She kisses him on the cheek, the corner right above his mouth. “I’ll give you a clue. This, right here? Is the best _I’ve_ ever had it.”

She is not going to let it go.

*

_This is what Queenie stole out of Grindelwald’s head:_

  * _The locations of his New York safe houses, which are not safe any more and (in a few instances where the fighting got out of hand) are no longer structurally cohesive enough to be called houses._
  * _The face of the lover he left behind, a memory faded by age but much-revisited. The man they belong to must be in his late forties now, maybe early fifties, but in Grindelwald’s memories he will always be a boy, blue eyes steady and so, so sad as he says_ no.
  * _Grindelwald has never been able to accept that_ no. _He gnaws on it like a bone._
  * _There is a symbol tied to that memory which has imprinted itself in his mind: a line within a triangle within a circle, wrought into silver and given as a token to Credence, but which he always meant to take back in the end. Newt says it is from an old story about power and glory and death. Those are the things Grindelwald craves above all: power, and glory, and death dealt by his hand to those he deems unworthy._
  * _There are a great many people he deems unworthy._
  * _Here is what he truly wants: to strip the world bare and remake it like a god, with his chosen few, as clean and true as only a dream-world can be. He believed for a time that the No-Majs – no, in his mind, always Muggles – would destroy themselves in war, and he still believes that, but now he sees they will need a greater push to get there. It is only ever in numbers that they have had the upper hand against the persecuted witches and wizards of the past. Without the force of the mob, magic will rule._
  * We will all be free, _he told Credence, and he meant it._
  * _You can trust ‘all’ as much as ‘never’, and ‘always’._



 


	2. Chapter 2

Everyone has the dream about the monster sooner or later. It’s there, the thing you fear, and you want to run – you are screaming at yourself to run – but your body knows that really you are asleep, and helpless, so you cannot move. You are petrified. You will be devoured.

Tina used to have the dream every other night when she was starting out with the Aurors. They had just moved into the brownstone, then, with their parents’ furniture and two beds squeezed into one room like they were still teenagers at Magda’s. Tina would come home to bed and if Queenie was awake (which she usually was, reading cheap paperback romances while she waited up, then reading a few chapters more because she’d just got to the good part) she would hear the dream start up like the opening music of a well-known and loathed film.

Sometimes she let Tina be. It was, after all, only a nightmare, and Tina was short with her when she was tired, too wrapped up in her exciting new career to ask Queenie about _her_ day. What did making tea and coffee for the secretarial staff mean in comparison to taking on the Dark Arts? Other times, when her feet hurt less, Queenie would climb into Tina’s bed and pet her hair until the dream faded into something else.

But one time, Queenie didn’t do that. Tina had come home quiet and trembling with bandages from wrist to forearm, burned by a curse she didn’t see coming and thinking (a true thought, all the way down to her core) _I’m not good enough, I will never be good enough to do this._ She fell straight into the dream: on the docks this time, with a wizard walking out of the fog, arm raised to curse her all over again. Queenie had had enough. She put down her book, leaned over and whispered in her sister’s ear, with all the conviction she had, _You have a wand. It’s right there in your pocket. You can stop him._

And suddenly, Tina could.

She never had the dream again. Queenie never told her why.

*

At six thirty on the morning of Grindelwald’s extradition, while Queenie is flipping listlessly through the blouses in her closet for a garment that adequately conveys the message ‘handle with care today’, she hears a clack on the window and goes over to let in the owl that is tapping its beak against the glass. It has a terse little note from Tina tied to its leg. There is no way to interpret _can you come over now, it’s important_ as anything other than an emergency, or a situation that is about to turn into an emergency, so Queenie throws on the first clothes that come to hand and is Apparating into the hallway in the brownstone less than five minutes later, only to walk through the door and find Seraphina Picquery sitting at the table, sipping at a cup of coffee.

“Madam President,” Queenie says blankly. She is about to say ‘what a pleasure’ but actually it isn’t and so there’s an awkward little pause instead. Queenie would be glaring at Tina for giving her no warning – Queenie _hates_ getting no warning – only it seems like a good idea to present a united front until they know what Picquery wants. Also, Tina has just woken up, obviously dressed in the same startled rush that Queenie did and hasn’t had a chance to comb her hair; she’s desperately embarrassed and probably wasn’t thinking very clearly when she dashed off that note.

“Good morning, Miss Goldstein,” Picquery says, stirring cream into her cup. She is wearing one of those tailored suits that she favours with practical pumps and a set of golden bracelets around one wrist. _She_ looks like a particularly daring fashion plate, one Tina is sold on despite an entire catalogue of recent disappointments.

In all fairness to Picquery, the disappointments are for the most part not her doing. She argued strenuously against Grindelwald’s ever leaving his cell alive; but she’s a president, not a queen, and she got outvoted. From the look of it, she does not feel resigned to the fact. Why else would she be here, with her most controversial Auror and that Auror’s No-Maj-loving outcast of a sister?

“So,” Queenie says, with slightly abrasive sweetness, as she slides into a chair at the table, “are we girls having a tea party or is there a special occasion?”

Picquery looks at her like she’s mildly disappointed but didn’t expect any better. It is the same way she looks at nearly everyone, or possibly that is just her face. “I’ll do us all the favour of not pretending you don’t know what’s happening today,” she says, putting down her cup. “Even though that information is top secret, need-to-know only.”

“Ma’am,” Tina says, sharper than is wise, “we needed to know.”

That is unexpected enough to startle Picquery into a proper expression, the slight frown more puzzled than annoyed. The Porpentina Goldstein she heard the occasional report from, and maybe a bit more about from Graves, was committed her her duty and unquestioning in her loyalty, a shiny little cog turning industriously away in the system. The past few months have wrought a lot of changes. Back then, Tina would have buckled under that frown, accustomed to accepting that her superiors knew best. Now, she looks steadily back.

“You have a point,” Picquery says, after a short pause. “Not that it makes me feel any better about the state of security in my own government, but at least I don’t have to brief both of you on the situation before I go into why I’m here.” She shifts in her chair to return her full attention to Queenie, whose stomach sinks with the weight of expectant dread. “At eleven o’clock this evening, Grindelwald will be removed from his cell and placed in the custody of the British Aurors. I want you there, to listen in on the handover.”

 _No,_ Tina thinks. “Queenie,” she begins out loud, but Queenie presses her foot against her sister’s and waits for Picquery to finish what she’s come here to say. Tina is not the only one here who has lost faith in recent times, or who has started looking at rules with an eye for how they can be bent. Picquery is not a woman who asks for favours lightly.

“If all goes well,” Picquery continues, “nobody need know you were there. All I want is for you to keep a mental ear out, be aware of any trickery. Can you do that?”

“I don’t know. His mind,” Queenie says, and stops, unable to find words that describe what she saw. Trickery does not begin to cover it. “I got as much as I did from him because he was angry at first, he was trying to get at me and was careless. Then Mr Graves used that spell on him, and I got much more. But even then, there were places I couldn’t reach.”

“Hm,” Picquery says, frown deepening.

To keep out a Legilimens, the most important thing is to know your own thoughts. That way, you’re aware of when they are not, in fact, yours. “I couldn’t do anything more than listen in on the surface,” Queenie says slowly, “or he’d know I was there.”

“That’s all I’m asking of you, Miss Goldstein. I’m aware it’s a lot.”

“Does Mr Graves know about this?” Queenie asks, and watches Picquery’s mouth purse unhappily, which is enough of an answer.

“He’ll be there to oversee the operation,” she says evasively.

“So, he doesn’t know you came here then,” Tina interrupts fiercely, though what difference Graves’ approval might have made to Picquery’s plan is negigible for her. She’s too upset to moderate her tone or notice Picquery’s ‘I can demote you if I feel like it’ stare. “Queenie, you can’t do it.”

“There’s something else you should know.” Picquery leans forward, hands gripping the edge of the table. “We have five registered Seers across the country, and three we know about in Britain. As of yesterday morning, every single one of them has had the same vision. They say there’s another war coming. Another Great War, and this time our world will be in the very thick of it.”

There is a dreadful hush as Queenie and Tina look at each other. It’s Tina who pulls herself together enough to ask the question: “What happened yesterday morning?”

“That’s just it,” Picquery says, very quietly, as if she is afraid of her own admission. “We don’t know.”

*

Tina’s dream was not the first time Queenie did what only Queenie could do. It was the third.

The first time, she was twelve years old and it was her first Hannukah away from home. She had been lucky the first year at Ilvermorny, Hannukah had fallen in the Christmas holiday break then, but this time it was just her and Tina and the menorah their parents had packed for them so they would not be left adrift among the school’s Christmas trees and caroling statuary. There had been a fight over which sister should have the menorah in her dormitory. In the end they had done a coin flip for it and Queenie had won, so she proudly carried it back to her room in the east wing, clearing her books off the windowsill to make a proper space.

As the other girls in the dormitory came back from dinner and noticed what she was doing, Queenie absently read each reaction: surprise, curiosity, a brief glancing acknowledgement subsumed under worry about unfinished homework. Queenie’s Legilimency was growing clearer. She was getting better at hearing individual thoughts all the time, but she had to be paying attention. Right then she was busy trying to find another place to put the term’s worth of clutter that had been on the windowsill, so she didn’t really register when the last girl came in or what Adelaide Rourke was thinking when she saw the menorah’s polished arms gleaming against the night-dark glass. She didn’t pay much attention to Adelaide, honestly; hers was a mind of sharp, anxious edges, not a welcoming place to be.

But she heard her voice just fine.

“Honestly,” Adelaide said, “do you actually believe all that mumbo-jumbo about candles and miracles?” She turned to the other girls for support. “Isn’t that, well. More of a No-Maj thing? All well and good for the superstitious, but we’re _witches_.”

Queenie’s armful of books and papers slid free to the floor. She let them. “You don’t mean – that’s not funny,” she said, uncertainly. She reached out instinctively to find the right thing to say that would make this horrible moment go away and Adelaide be reasonable again, only to come up against those sharp corners and realise that Adelaide did mean it.

It was carnival-mirror strange, so disorienting she thought she must have somehow misunderstood, because those were prejudices she was accustomed to reading off No-Majs. Witches and wizards were better than that. Queenie had been so sure they were better than that. Yes, Ilvermorny’s school year was designed around the holidays of a religion most of its students didn’t believe in, but that was about aligning with the pattern of No-Maj schools and making it easier on the wizarding children who lived between No-Maj neighbours. It wasn’t about – favourites. About one facade of faith being better than another.

Queenie’s faith was not a facade. She had always found it easy to believe in something bigger than herself, something great and glorious out there that was big enough to make sense of all this. Magic was not the answer to all things; she believed in miracles.

She was twelve years old, a loved child, not used to people wanting to hurt her.

“Go on,” Adelaide said, folding her arms. “Try not to set the curtains alight, there’s a pet.”

The other girls were uncomfortable. They didn’t say anything. It was a moment Queenie understood on instinct and would later recognise as the pivot-point that dictates whose word becomes accepted fact. This was the moment to be blisteringly articulate. The problem was, Queenie was too shocked and hurt to find words at all. All she could think was, _You should not be saying these things. You should be sorry. Why aren’t you sorry?_ The words were so loud in her head, ringing in her ears like she had shouted them, though she had not said a word.

And Adelaide said, in a startled babble, “I’m so sorry, Queenie, I’m stupid, I’m so sorry.”

She burst into tears. The other girls looked on, frozen in confusion; Queenie was frozen too, but with a flickering, half-formed guilt. “I forgive you,” she said. It wasn’t true. It didn’t work, either; Adelaide couldn’t stop crying. Her mind felt…wrong. The sharp edges had collided with something harder than they were, and Adelaide couldn’t cope with it. Queenie had to take her to the hospital wing in the end, since nobody else seemed to know what to do. She sat outside the curtained bed until the nurse came out, stopping to soothe her with a warm hand on her hair.

“She’s overwrought, that’s all,” the nurse said. “You’re a good friend, but you can go to bed now.”

Instead of saying _she’s not my friend_ , Queenie caught the nurse’s sleeve and said, “She’ll be all right?”

“A good night’s sleep is what she needs. What you need too, I expect.”

Adelaide wasn’t crying when she came back to the dormitory in the morning. She wasn’t sorry either, for what she had said, but she had never really been sorry at all, had she?

The girls followed Queenie, after that; the pivot-point flipped her way. Adelaide was cemented as the hysterical one and Queenie as sensible, reliable, which she was –

She could also make a girl cry herself to pieces, if she wanted, but they didn’t know that.

*

“I can’t believe you said yes,” Tina says shrilly, as soon as the President is gone.

Picquery had made her case in clear, precise terms while Queenie thought _no_ and Tina thought it louder, until Picquery was finished talking and Queenie had instead said, “I’ll do it.” She said yes to interrogating Grindelwald for Jacob’s sake, months ago – Picquery kept her word on their terms, somehow, while everything else was falling apart, and her argument makes as much sense now as it did then. It’s not like she’s even asking all that much, when it is laid out in neat sentences. Queenie will be hidden away somewhere near Grindelwald’s cell. She will skim over the surface of his thoughts for signs of foul-play (more accurately, foul-play that he can realistically achieve as opposed to wishful thinking) and if she sees anything that worries her, she will alert the American Aurors by sending one of the MACUSA’s paper mice, coded with a useful little spell that will change the words if the wrong person tries to read it. Picquery demonstrated. Queenie will hardly be in any danger at all.

“Wait until I tell Jacob,” Tina rages. “I’m telling him right now,” and she Disapparates before Queenie can stop her. Queenie would go after her, but that would mean having this argument all over again straight away at the bakery, and that is not what she planned to do with her morning. She decides to finish her coffee and walk to the orphanage instead of Apparating to give herself time to come up with soothing things to say when she eventually goes home. As a Legilimens, it is necessary to keep one’s loved ones in a good mood, or else abide in the midst of sullenness like being stuck in the rain without an umbrella.

It’s just not Queenie’s day for being popular. As she walks into the building, she can hear the matron looking for her, deeply suspicious about all Modesty’s peculiar visitors and wanting the sort of answers Queenie very much doesn’t want to give. Fortunately, she is good at avoiding people when she wants to. She ducks into an empty bedroom to wait for the matron to go past then sneaks upstairs to where Modesty is curled up precariously on a narrow window-sill.

“Where’s Jacob?” she asks. Her cheek is pressed against the glass and her eyes are on the street. She can see Queenie’s reflection, but doesn’t turn around.

“He’s at home,” Queenie says, “about to be very cross with me.”

That makes Modesty looks around. “What did you do?”

“Well, I haven’t done it yet, but I will.” Queenie comes over to join her at the window. “I can do something, you see, that other people can’t, and it might make him safer.”

“Why is he going to be cross,” Modesty asks, “if you’re doing it for him?”

“Because it’s not going to be very safe for me,” Queenie admits. “He worries.”

Modesty thinks that sounds nice. Unlikely, and unattainable, but nice.

“He’s worried about you too,” Queenie tells her. “I’m going to try and explain this, honey. You can love someone a lot, but it doesn’t mean much if you don’t choose them too. To be there for them, to let them be there for you. To be a better person for them. When I was a little bit older than you, my parents got very sick and they died. A friend of my theirs took me and my sister in. She wasn’t motherly. She didn’t expect to ever have to look after us, but that’s what happened – terrible things do happen, and what really matters is what you do with the pieces afterwards. She decided to look after us. It was a choice she made all the time, minute to minute.” She kneels, bringing her eyes level with Modesty’s. “You have a home with me if you want it. I’m not going to change my mind. Honestly, I don’t do that much. It’s up to you now, if you want to choose me.”

Modesty is folded up on herself, a child who learned young not to take up space; her eyes are owlish and untrusting as they meet Queenie’s. She doesn’t say anything, so Queenie waits. This may be the first time in her life that Modesty has ever had the chance to actually _choose_ anything.

“Why do you want me?” Modesty demands. “There are little children here. They’re nicer.”

“Nice isn’t really the point,” Queenie says mildly. “I want a family. You’re part of that family.”

Modesty thinks of family. She doesn’t trust the word. It means a cold house, burning lines across her palms. It means being swung up into thin, strong arms and carried when she was too tired to walk for herself. It means a mother and sister who are dead, and the brother who is still here, frightened and frightening and familiar just the same.

“Is Credence your family?” she wants to know.

“Yes.”

“Did he ask you to come for me?”

“He would have. I got here first. He’s going to be cross with me too, by the way, about this thing I’m going to do. Everyone is going to be cross. Even you, maybe.”

Modesty giggles despite herself. “Will I…” She unfolds a little, letting her legs slide down from their defensive wall against her chest to swing off the ledge. She sounds almost shy now. “Would I have a room? Of my own?”

“You would,” Queenie promises.

“I’ll run away,” Modesty says, with sudden decision, “if I don’t like you.”

“I believe you.” Queenie holds out her hand, to help Modesty down, and Modesty takes it.

*

It happened again at the beginning of the summer holidays before Queenie’s last year at Ilvermorny, on the day before her second birthday as an orphan. She was at Lefay’s Emporium, getting measured for a brassiere that cost enough to pay for half the textbooks she had not bought yet and deciding whether to get her new slip in cream, lemon or rose.

“Rose will suit your complexion,” the woman with the measuring tape told her. “Lovely skin you’ve got, miss. Lift your arms, please.”

The tape looped around her chest on its own while the woman peered over her spectacles and noted down the measurements. She made a satisfied noise when she was done and tipped her wand to summon over a length of sheer rose fabric that twined around Queenie’s body like the second skin she wanted it to be. “Oh,” Queenie sighed, “it’s lovely.”

She had saved up for this for months and still couldn’t quite afford it – she would have to hope she could get a few of her books second-hand this year, to make her uncle’s generosity stretch far enough – but she was tired of practical cotton and flannel, she wanted something pretty she had not had to make herself, and it was her birthday tomorrow. So she tucked all those bills to the back of her mind and enjoyed the moment: the soft ripple of silk, the lace and the ribbons. She looked in the mirror and smiled widely at herself. She wished she didn’t have to cover it all up. These were going to be the nicest things she owned.

“Very nice, miss,” the witch with the measuring tape said, snapping her fingers to pack her little kit back together and go off to measure the next customer. “You’re not going to need any love potions to get a husband, looking like that.”

Which took the wind out of Queenie’s sails, a bit; she had not got around to imagining what anyone else would make of her purchases, let alone someone who would expect to take the lingerie _off_ her, and yes, it was a joke, but the things love potions did to their drinkers’ thoughts made Queenie’s skin crawl. Ten minutes later she was clutching a small bundle of parcels and browsing the cosmetics display as she lingered near the door, reluctant to leave the floral-scented bustle of the emporium. The wintry slush outside was a reminder that the No-Maj world was bigger than theirs, and louder, and there was no getting away from it for long.

So Queenie was still there, wistfully pricing lipsticks, when a woman walked past with a porcelain face made up like a beauty queen and a man dying bloody in her head.

People think about murder more than you would expect. More than Queenie expected, anyway. But for this woman, it was not an idle fantasy about strangling her lecherous boss or suffocating her inconsiderate neighbour – she _wanted_ her husband dead and knew exactly how she was going to go about it. This was not, Queenie saw, the first time she had killed someone. It was not even the first time that she had killed a husband. Inside the woman’s head, it was like a house of clean white rooms and no windows, all the messy complicated bits (like doubts, and ethics) swept briskly away to make more space for her glorious vision of her life.

Currently, that involved a new hat and a staged accident on a yacht.

She swept past while Queenie was still frozen, arms full of parcels, head full of death. The woman was a witch; her husband was a wizard; she planned to poison him into a ‘heart attack’, move to England, marry a very wealthy No-Maj (preferably one with a title. She had a list) and see how that worked out. It was always easier to kill No-Majs if they ended getting up in the way. Wizards probably wouldn’t notice, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t care.

Queenie’s first instinct was, _tell Tina._ Tina had been saying she was going to be an Auror since they were children and this year she was starting the basic training to do just that. She always knew things like what form to fill out and who to take a problem to, while Queenie had to fish what she needed out of people’s heads and hope they understood it all better than she did.

Only, Tina wasn’t here and there was a murderess criticising hats right over there, thinking dispassionately about how it would look to Society if she bought an entirely new wardrobe in black for the mourning period, because while it suited her, she didn’t like it, and could only tolerate it on the absolute cutting edge of fashion. She didn’t like any of these hats either. She missed the ones with a short pointed tip and enormous brim, from under which one’s eyes could look luminous and alluring at garden parties.

She was going to go home, tonight, and kill her husband, and who was going to believe Queenie in time that she’d heard a murder that hadn’t happened yet?

What she did next wasn’t wise; but then, neither was deciding to commit a murder.

“You went and _chatted_ with her?” Tina asked later, high-pitched with incredulity. “Queenie!”

“I wanted to distract her,” Queenie said, which was not a lie. Nor was it the full truth, of course. She went over there so she could bump into the elegant witch, and she did that so she could catch her arm to steady her, and she did _that_ in order to say, direct into her head, _it’s much too risky killing Algernon just now, I’ll be the obvious suspect. Better to delay it for a while._

She had learned from the experience with Adelaide: that she should never do this, and that if she did do it after all, the thoughts she planted had to fit the climate inside the head in question. A full change of heart was not going to stick with this lady for long, if it could be fitted in there in the first place. A bit of caution might work, though. Queenie offered her a bright apologetic smile and went home to tell Tina what she’d seen.

Tina dutifully took it to the correct authorities, who brooded over it dubiously for a while before taking action. The investigation revealed nothing in the way of evidence. “Maybe she was just upset with him and didn’t want to kill him after all,” Tina suggested, unaware of how aggravating she was being. Queenie did not make that sort of mistake.

Three months later the husband showed up dead, floating in the sea, the woman who killed him long gone. So Queenie knew, then, just how good her hold had to be.

And that she should never, ever do this.

*

Everyone wants to yell at Queenie. They can’t, because Modesty is upstairs with Jacob being settled into the spare room that’s not spare any more, and nobody wants to frighten her off, but she can’t hear yelling that is just in people’s heads and Queenie, unfortunately, can. Credence is the worst, radiating distress in all directions, so frightened that he begins to turn blurry around the edges and is impossible to comfort.

That’s when Graves arrives, summoned to contribute to the judgement of Queenie’s life choices. He ignores everyone else, going straight over to slip one large hand around the back of Credence’s neck to press Credence’s face into his shoulder until he starts to calm, the animal reassurance of touch enough to physically ground him, though his fear is still miasma-thick in the kitchen, where they have all gathered together to thrash this out.

Not that there is anything to thrash out: Queenie is doing it, nobody gets a vote. Saying so won’t help, so she doesn’t – just sits quietly with her hands pressed to her temples while the waves of Tina and Jacob’s increasingly desperate and impractical alternative solutions wash over her. Credence is gasping, _he’ll get out, he’ll find her, he’ll find you,_ against Graves’ neck and Graves is, in answer, rubbing a hand up and down the line of Credence’s slender back, slow and sure.

He is not arguing that Grindelwald can’t possibly get loose; he’s keeping his own counsel, which Queenie rather thinks means it will be unpopular if he says it out loud. After all, he knows better than anyone else what manner of wizard they are dealing with. He needs Credence in his arms tonight as much as Credence needs him, months of study and second helpings and lazy post-coital kisses away from the terrified creature who nearly destroyed the city – a reminder that they really did make it out of the dark.

“I have to be there,” Queenie says, at last, and the truth they all know is that they can’t stop her.

There is another fight, short and vicious, over who will take her in. Tina wants to see to it personally and preferably have another go at talking Queenie into going home, but Graves calmly points out that as Director of Magical Security he’s the one with the necessary clearance. Queenie keeps her goodbyes brief; she means to be home by dawn. Once she’s kissed Jacob’s tight mouth goodbye, she joins Graves and they walk into the cool spring evening arm-in-arm, Apparating with the airy cleanness that Graves does so well.

They rematerialise in a quiet wood-panelled room, a study from the look of it, where a globe is slowly rotating on a desk and many silver-framed photographs are hung in square formations on the walls. Queenie turns to look at the nearest ones and is startled to see a younger version of Graves grinning out in black-and-white, hair ruffled into disarray by a long-ago breeze, shoulder-to-shoulder with a Seraphina Picquery who can’t be older than nineteen and is giggling helplessly into her hands.

“Graduation,” Graves says, catching the direction of Queenie’s gaze. “We were rather drunk, as I remember – formal occasions bring out the worst in both of us.”

“You look happy,” Queenie says, wanting to look around for more. She loves photographs, but they frustrate her. They are pieces of a story she doesn’t get to read all the way through. “Where are we? I don’t know this place.”

“It’s not technically a part of the MACUSA. We’re in an office across the street. Seraphina likes to keep it for quiet meetings.” By ‘quiet’, it is evident he means ‘secret’. “This way. The ideal here is to be as discreet as possible.”

Queenie follows him down a musty, enclosed stair into an even mustier tunnel that is just about high enough for them both to walk standing straight, wand-tips lit against the gloom. Graves says suddenly, “Thank you for doing this.”

“You don’t think I should stay where it’s safe and sound, huh?”

“There’s no such thing as being safe while Grindelwald is in this country,” Graves says baldly. “But with you there, at least we may gain some idea of how unsafe we are.”

“Gosh, sugar,” Queenie murmurs, “way to make a girl feel warm and fuzzy.”

She can hear faint rumbling from overhead. They are underneath the street, heading towards the MACUSA. She knows when they reach it by the shock of protective magics that make all the hair stand up on her skin, much worse than the wards at home; these ones are reinforced daily and backed up by a team of Aurors personally trained by Graves himself, who has to prove his identity with a code memory in a Pensieve and receive the same confirmation in return before he and Queenie can make their way into MACUSA’s vaults. This is where the most dangerous prisoners are kept until someone works out what to do with them. Queenie has never been down here before. It is spartan, with the stale smell of a buried place.

Graves strides ahead with unthinking assurance, very familiar with the route he is taking. He leads Queenie up a stairway so narrow his shoulders very nearly brush the sides and then down a corridor lined on both sides with doors that have no locks or handles, and can only be identified as ‘doors’ from the shape and size of them. Brass numbers gleam dully on each one in the low light.

“We used to go dancing,” Graves says, an apparent continuation of the conversation they dropped ten minutes ago, “Seraphina and I, after one or both of us had been in a raid or wrapped up a case. We would always go to the same place, order the same drinks, even when we were too exhausted to really dance. It was a way to keep an eye on each other without being too…dramatic about it. Seraphina was the one who knew what to do if I didn’t come back. Who to tell, funeral arrangements, how to keep my mother from taking over everything and turning me into a symbol of pureblood martyrdom.”

Queenie snorts, unable to help herself. Graves smirks a little and doesn’t speak again until they’ve turned down another corridor.

“We got used to the danger eventually,” he says then. “I trusted her competence. She trusted mine. It worked well. Of course, there is such a thing as too much trust, but anything you care about can be used against you if it comes to that.”

“I’m still not going to work for you,” Queenie says, guessing where the anecdote is going. “I hope you know this is a one-off deal.”

Graves pauses to look at her, impatient. “Yes, we’ve been over that. What I’m saying is that Tina and Jacob don’t really understand what you’re capable of – or rather, they love you too much to see it clearly. I _will_ get you home safely, whatever happens tonight, but I trust in your ability to take very good care of yourself.”

Tina used to come home glowing when she’d earned a word or two of Graves’ rare praise. Queenie can see why now. “So where’s my seat for the show?” she asks, keeping her voice light.

Graves guides her to the end of the corridor and up to one of the handle-less doors. He raps on it with his wand. Queenie peers around him curiously as the door warps and swells, a little gargoyle of a face appearing where the handle ought to be. Graves proffers his wrist. The gargoyle takes a delicate nip with tiny wooden teeth, licks a dab of red off its lips and says in a shrill voice, “Admitted!” at the same time as the door swings open.

The room inside is small, equipped only with a desk, a bench and a window at the far end. Only, it isn’t really a window – frameless, it shimmers under Queenie’s gaze, solid wall enchanted to transparency – and what it looks down upon is more pit than cell. A corporeal spell floats overhead, silvery and serpentine, dripping intermittent sparks from its fangs. “A Sigyn,” Graves explains to Queenie, coming to stand behind her at the portal. “It won’t hurt unless the prisoner attempts to use magic. If they do that, it will hurt very much.”

“Did you cast it?” Queenie asks.

“No. The President did it personally.” Graves points to the symbols etched into the ceiling. “Once cast, the structure of the cell makes the spell self-sustaining. Much more practical than that unholy arrangement the British made with the Dementors, but I am prepared to set aside all criticisms if Grindelwald rots in Azkaban.”

Queenie looks down and sees Grindewald in chains. They lock around his wrists and wind around his body, criss-crossing over his back, but the way he strolls around his cell tricks you into forgetting he’s bound at all; he’s a gentleman of the old aristocracy taking his leisure, hands clasped behind his back, contemplating the shimmering serpent above his head as if it is a mildly interesting weather phenomenon. Graves regards him in silence. He’s still holding his wand, fingers pressed so tight against the wood that the tips have gone white. Queenie can _hear_ him, the way she could after the interrogation when he was so worried about Credence it bled through his barriers. Right now he is so angry it seems he ought to be physically vibrating with the desire to go in there and end Grindelwald with a curse to his throat. Queenie winces. Graves catches it, and the spill of fury disappears like a curtain has been drawn between them.

“You’ve got quite the temper,” Queenie remarks, rubbing her temple.

“I’m being restrained. I’m only thinking about it, not doing it.” Graves flexes his fingers around his wand. “I should have killed him when I could, and to hell with the consequences.”

“I’d be dead, then, so I can’t agree with you.” Queenie waits for him to look at her before adding, “If you’d gone in there and executed him for yourself, Picquery would have had to lock you up, so you’d never have come to put wards on my house. You’d never have met the Niffler, either, those arrests wouldn’t have happened because who else would train a Niffler in detecting dark magic?”

“Credence would be safer,” Graves says evenly, “if Grindelwald were gone.”

“Really?” Queenie shakes her head. “He’s the Obscurus of New York. He’s less _unsafe_ because you’re around to make the big dogs leave him be. Take it from me, if you do anything around here that doesn’t toe the company line, you’ll be picking it-could-be-worses out of your teeth for years to come. You did what you could.”

That is what she’s here to do, isn’t it: what she can. She reaches out warily to skim the surface of Grindelwald’s mind, bracing herself for contact, only to hear – “Singing,” she says blankly. “He’s singing, in his head. In German.” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand German.”

“Neither do I,” Graves admits. “He’s _singing_?”

Queenie concentrates. She gets another echo of the song, something that sounds to her untrained ear like a folk song, the worn rhythms imposed over a rolling undertow of other thoughts that are too deep down to drag to the surface without getting Grindelwald’s attention. She tells Graves so. He frowns heavily, considering.

“If you can’t read him, you can’t. You’re here to be a precaution, not to take an active role. Keep trying, though.” Graves nods at the bench. “Wait here. There are pens, ink and paper mice in the desk. Send a message as soon as you hear as something worth telling us, and if you notice anything that is an immediate threat, tap your wand against the portal here. I’ll come to get you myself when the transfer is done, don’t trust anyone who says they’ve come from me, even if it’s the President herself.”

“I know a liar when I hear one,” Queenie points out.

He looks at her pensively. “I wish you worked for me.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, honey, but I’m very glad I don’t.”

After he leaves, Queenie sits on the bench so that she doesn’t have to watch Grindelwald while she attempts to eavesdrop in his head. The whole situation makes her dreadfully uncomfortable. This is what _Tina_ does, and Queenie is proud of her for it, but the room is very cold, being one wall away from a war-mongering maniac is making Queenie twitchy and nobody thought to provide her with coffee. She sits through six verses of the song, all tinged with an indistinct sense of self-satisfaction, before it abruptly cuts off and is replaced by a bright, sharp alertness. Queenie gets up then, to see what has changed.

A door has opened in the cell wall, where there was no door at all before. Ten Aurors file in, wands drawn. Queenie recognises half of them by sight and thoughts, so the other five must be the British guards. Behind them walks Graves, Picquery and a tall grey-haired man Queenie guesses must be the British ambassador who has been kicking up such a tremendous fuss about bringing Grindelwald to face justice overseas. Tina has been thinking nasty things about him for weeks but the name escapes Queenie just now. In hindsight, she really could have prepared better for this.

She knows why Picquery arranged it all in such a hurry, though. This way, there was much less of a chance that someone would find out. Here, in Picquery’s bastion, in the halls Graves has devoted his life to protecting, they trust nobody.

Queenie closes her eyes to concentrate better, slipping between minds as she tries to get a feel for who these people are. It’s hard when they’re strangers, and the accents don’t help. People do not, as a general rule, keep their dark secrets on the surface; they tend to be preoccupied with things like the uncomfortable fit of a shoe, what they plan to have for dinner, how much they don’t like that specific person they have to work with. Queenie checks to be sure that all the American Aurors are who they look to be – relieved to discover that they are – before trying her luck with the Brits.

Two have quite good mental barriers, strong enough that Queenie would have to put effort into getting past them. She suspects that might spark an international incident, so doesn’t. Of the other three, the only woman among the Brits is fuming because one of the MACUSA suits upstairs called her English when she is _fucking Scottish_ , the man beside her is very aware of her fuming and is hoping she doesn’t hex anyone on her way out, and the other man is half-focused on Grindelwald but half on Graves as well, untrusting, suspecting conspiracy.

The ambassador is harder to read – which is to be expected, what kind of ambassador has not mastered basic Occlumency? But the slipperiness of his thoughts aggravates Queenie. She can’t even get hold of his name, and that usually floats to the surface easiest of all. It’s like this portal; a window painted onto a wall, with nothing tangible underneath…

That’s the right thread to pull on. The minute she thinks of it like that, thoughts painted on, she sees that is what they are. False thoughts. They don’t even belong to him – innocuous images from a Pensieve, still and lifeless in the wrong mind, hung there deliberately by someone who expected a Legilimens to be poking around.

Queenie fumbles her wand from the pocket of her coat and taps it against the enchanted window, twice. She doesn’t know what effect that has on the other side, but Graves’ gaze sharpens; he murmurs something to Picquery and turns to leave the room. Underneath the bland, unassuming veneer of the ambassador’s mind, Queenie feels a surge of intent and cries out a warning, slapping her hand against the window. Her palm bounces back, stinging from a collision with the wall underneath.

The portal vanishes.

Queenie blinks, shocked, at the blank wall, and says the most unladylike word she knows. Should she leave? Should she find someone else to tell? But what does she really _know,_ what can she say that will make any sense to someone who is not a Legilimens? That a respected foreign ambassador’s mind ‘feels wrong’? The sense of those minds in the cell begins to ebb, one leaving after another, and Graves still doesn’t come to get her. Queenie makes up her mind.

She doesn’t have to feed the little gargoyle to get out, which is a small relief, but once she’s out she doesn’t know which way to take. As she turns left, trying to track the retreating minds of the Aurors, he ambassador’s name comes to her suddenly, memory loosened by the incoming tide of fright: Apollo Gaunt, that’s what it was. That’s who he was supposed to be.

And she thinks – can’t be certain, it’s only a feeling – that he is exactly who he says he is.

If she can’t get hold of Graves, she’ll tell Picquery, who got her into this mess in the first place and may, if it comes to that, be the only one who can do a damn thing now that Grindelwald has been passed off into British hands.

But where the hell _is_ Graves?

*

Getting into someone’s head is not the hard part.

Some minds, of course, are better guarded than others. Some have walls up that cannot be easily overcome, but they are few and far between – the vast majority of people, No-Maj and wizarding alike, are completely unprepared, all the doors and windows open to their thoughts for a Legilimens to wander in at will.

Queenie has heard heartbreaks and humiliations, other people’s private despair, the kind of grief that numbs and the kind that catches fire. She knows why that girl walking past was smiling and why the old man at the corner table was staring into space and why the young man with the wild eyes was running to get away from the train instead of getting on it. She has been the witness to a hundred thousand fragments of stories she would never see the end of, as insignificant as the reader is to the hero of a novel. Even wizards, who know that people like Queenie exist, never expect to actually meet one – and for some reason, never expect it to be _her_.

Tina thinks she should be more careful. That she should try not to listen. Tina thinks that listening is all she has ever done, because Queenie keeps so many secrets and some of them are her own, and it’s easy to forget the danger if there’s enough love in the way. Tina loves her very much.

This is Queenie’s biggest secret: _getting in is not the hard part._ If she wanted, she could go so much deeper than she does. She could finish the story, for once – and if she didn’t like the ending, she could change it for a better one.

The hard part is getting out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! There has been Computer Drama of late so I'm posting this while I can.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story did _not_ want to be finished. My laptop objected to its existence SPECIFICALLY and just getting the document open turned into a drama. But finished it is! Here is the third, final chapter, and an epilogue. Thank you so much to everyone who has read and commented throughout the course of the story. Without you, _Do We Live_ would have been a one-shot, and over 50 000 words would never have been written.

_It started in Godric’s Hollow, with the little girl who died._

_It wasn’t my fault. He said it was, after, and I let him – she was dead, he was out of his mind with guilt and grief, if he wanted to think it was my wand that struck the final curse then that was the last kindness he would get from me. If it wasn’t for her and the loud-mouthed brother, Albus_ would _have come with me. He wanted to. He promised. We would have done it all together, no doubts, no hesitations, he would have been mine and the world would have been ours and I’d have told him…_

_Everything._

_I wished them both gone, Ariana and Aberforth. They were nothing like Albus: no brains, no ambition, the power in their bloodline squandered. I did pity the little girl. No witch should ever be at the mercy of Muggles, and the worst injustice was when they took her father away for defending her. Percival Dumbledore sounded a fine man. He acted too late, however, to save his daughter’s reason. It was no pleasure to me (or to Albus, whatever he said) to see Ariana skulking about the house like a timid shadow. She should have been sent to St Mungo’s, where they could keep her quiet and happy with the right potions and perhaps even retrain her to use a little magic, enough to look after herself. As for Aberforth, well, Albus’s time was wasted on him. All that boy was good for was running about with his goats._

_They weren’t clever. Just clever enough not to trust me. Ariana was lost in her own head, but not so far she didn’t see I was trying to take her brother away, and when she heard the fighting…_

_She misunderstood. She thought it was her brothers against me. She didn’t realise that they were fighting each other too, that we all in that moment hated each other, every grudge and bitter thought we’d ever had spewing out of our wands as curses. All Ariana saw was the wizard she hated set against the ones she loved._

_So she did the only thing she knew how to do. She could not make magic; only become it, not a girl any more but a monster of smoke and shadow, descending to seize me in its impossible maw._

_But I did not kill her. And for all that she tried, she did not kill me._

_Instead, she showed me the truth._

*

Recognising a mind at a distance is somewhat like hearing a voice in a crowded room: easy to pick out if well-known, but a less familiar note might go unnoticed or take a while to place. Queenie is looking for Percival Graves – a task made harder by the blockade he habitually puts up around his thoughts – but the mind that she actually registers takes a few minutes to identify. Her instinctive reaction is to raise her wand defensively, though the wizard is not in the narrow stairway she’s climbing and has no way of telling where _she_ is. The first and only time she heard that mind, it belonged to a man in a mask who was trying to set her home on fire.

The MACUSA is under attack, and it seems that only Queenie knows it.

She emerges from the stairs into a hallway of blue and bronze, out of the dungeons at last. No paper mice are scuttling about with their scribbled memos and gossip at this hour, there is no scratching of quills in the offices Queenie passes. The lamps are dimmed and it is very quiet, both to her ears and her mind. Even though everything looks rather different by night, it doesn’t take Queenie long to get her bearings; nobody knows the MACUSA better than the witches who serve its coffee.

She aims for the atrium, which is at the heart of the building and where the procession of Aurors – supposing that Grindelwald is still with them – will certainly pass on their way out. The soaring space is all shadows. Nothing is moving. That doesn’t mean nobody is there. When she reaches out, Queenie can hear that Grindelwald’s follower did not come alone. There are at least six of them, all on the move, their thoughts a low, purposeful hum.

Queenie grips her wand tighter. Too often lately, she’s been wishing for Tina’s hardwon skill and memory for curses; Queenie’s talent lies in the opposite direction, in smoothing over fights before they flare into something worse. Well, it’s too late for that now.

And _finally_ she hears the Aurors again, peaceful and unruffled, flanking a mind that sings steadily as a Siren, a flow of words that Queenie doesn’t understand rising and falling, rising and falling to a beat like an army drum. The lights in the atrium brighten suddenly as the Aurors draw close. Queenie still can’t see Grindelwald’s followers. Their thoughts, though, grow louder, anticipation soaring as they draw in together towards the atrium.

Queenie has rules. She _needs_ rules. But if ever there was a time to break them…

_You are walking straight into a trap,_ she thinks as forcefully as she can, _Grindelwald has bought the ambassador and his people are inside the walls._ Then she throws it all as hard as she can into the depths of Seraphina Picquery’s mind. She has a brief, vivid impression of Picquery’s shock and a slap just like a strong wave knocks Queenie straight out again. At the same time, she catches a snatch of frustration that can only belong to Graves. The overlap is terribly disorienting. Queenie reels a bit as she refocuses, grabbing at a railing that she can’t properly see just now. She’s starting to feel what promises to be a really vicious headache and for a second she thinks that is why she is so unsteady.

Then she realises that the ground is shaking. A crack splits across the floor below, a widening zig-zag through which white smoke billows. It smells sweet, Queenie thinks faintly, of lilies.

And she loses her feet altogether.

*

“ _Your problem, Seraphina,” Percival says sagely, “is you like winning too much.”_

“ _And you…don’t?” I scoff. Most of my attention is on the chess board between us, from which he is obviously trying to distract me. We have claimed one of the few good patches of shade on this sun-saturated summer afternoon, under the big maple tree on the western lawn with Percival’s cloak for a picnic blanket. He fussed, as if he doesn’t know ten different cleaning spells to keep his clothes flawless and his dormmates in line. He’s a_ Graves _– he can just buy a new cloak, if it comes to that. But Percival is finicky. He has to take to a thing to accept it into his life. He doesn’t take to things easily, and once he does, he hates to lose them._

“ _Winning is not the point,” he says, three days short of seventeen and winner of all life’s lotteries: a gifted wizard from a wealthy, respected family, with velvet brown eyes and long lashes that have half the girls in our year (and some of the boys, which Percival appreciates more) blushing and fluttering when he walks into class._

_He took my queen two moves ago, but I was prepared for that – I favour my queen, so it is the piece he always targets first – and my knights are moving inexorably in on his king. One of them draws its sword and runs Percival’s bishop through. A little spray of debris scatters across the board._

“ _Treason,” Percival murmurs. I laugh._

_I do love winning. I love chess. I love Ilvermorny, where every classroom is open to me, every skill is mine to acquire, and when I sit talking to a rich white boy, he knows I am his equal as unquestioningly as I know it. I hate it all for the same reason. Ilvermorny is its own little golden-hued bubble of carefully cultivated timelessness. Outside its walls, nothing_ changes _. In a few weeks we will graduate and the bubble will pop. When Percival leaves, he can walk down a No-Maj street and be respected as a gentleman – as long as he keeps those pretty eyes of his away from the wrong men. When I leave…well, I don’t intend to spend any longer in the No-Maj world than I absolutely have to. It doesn’t want me, and I damn well don’t want any part of it._

_Percival’s rook slides from a corner, unexpected, to take my knight. His full attention is bent on the game now, chin propped in his hand, lips a little pursed. We kissed at the Christmas ball, after drinking rather too much and having what was in hindsight an unnecessarily combative conversation about the properties of mistletoe. It was quite a good kiss, but I won’t be doing it again. I will also have to be careful about keeping my eyes to myself, when we leave Ilvermorny._

“ _If winning isn’t the point,” I ask, “what is?”_

_Percival spots my move just before I make it. I have a pawn now in place two moves away from the other end of the board, ready to be reincarnated as a queen, and he’ll be hard pressed to stop me without losing his king. He rocks back to consider his position._

“ _The point,” he says, “is that when you have to lose, you make it_ look _like winning.”_

“ _You are talking nonsense,” I point out._

_He smiles in a way that does not bode well for my pawn. “We’re about to graduate a school for magic, Seraphina. What’s nonsense to us?” He moves his rook again. “Check.”_

*

The first thing Queenie sees when she opens her eyes, head pounding fit to break in half, is a silvery glow she mistakes for moonlight. It is the colour of memories in a Pensieve, flowing in the air like a living thing. It is – and it takes her another minute of painful blinking to realise this – a Sigyn, grown enormous out its cell, dripping sparks of lightning-bright spellwork on the battling wizards and witches beneath. When one of the sparks connects, the masked wizard screams and falls to his knees. A shocking burn opens across his shoulder, robes smouldering away from the skin. Seraphina Picquery is on him in an instant. She brings her wand down with a decisive snap of her wrist.

Behind her, Graves has flung enchanted ropes around his opponent, and uses the leverage of them to swing the witch like a slingshot at a wizard about to curse Picquery. The two of them made a legendary team when they were Aurors. Queenie understands why.

It is just about the only thing she does understand just now. Graves has reappeared; Grindelwald, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen, and there are far more of his followers here than Queenie thought. The crack in the floor is wide enough to swallow a leg up to the knee and appears to be widening, though Queenie’s eyes are not at their most reliable, what with the way they keep blurring and refusing to stay open. She wonders if she’s concussed. She knows what that feels like in other people’s heads, but she’s never been in a position to find out for herself before.

When darkness floods her vision, however, it is not the onset of unconsciousness.

“Credence!” Graves’ wand arm drops; he’s staring up, lost somewhere between horror and awe. Behind him, a wizard steps out from behind a pillar and drops his mask. The face underneath it is utterly pale, the hair a bleached shock streaked with someone else’s blood. The swirling storm that was and (please, please) may still be Credence lashes out at its enemy.

But that’s not Grindelwald. Queenie can hear him. She has a sudden dreadful suspicion about what’s happening here. Picquery was walking into a trap, yes, but what if she was setting one too? If she _expected_ Grindelwald’s supporters would come for him, even here in the MACUSA…she couldn’t have known how they would do it, but Graves said she had cast the Sigyn herself. Obviously she had made a few modifications to that spell. And Graves himself – once he knew Grindelwald’s plans were rolling into motion, he had gone immediately to enact his own…

All very clever, except they had forgotten one detail. There is nothing Grindelwald does better than a mask, and what better mask than giving his followers his face?

Queenie gropes for the nearest support and gets her fingers around a railing, hauling herself upright and sucking in a pained breath as her head spins. She has to tell them. If they think they’ve already recaptured Grindelwald, he’s as good as escaped. Queenie looks for him inside her head, but that hurts too much, she can’t do that and walk at the same time. This feels like something worse than concussion. What was in that white smoke? How much of it did she breathe in?

One step at a time. _One, two, three,_ she breathes, pretending her feet can glide across the ruined floor as easily as they’ve waltzed in her kitchen. _One, two, three. Come on, honey, it’s not so far._ It feels far. A whole staircase lies between her and the battle. But maybe just moving is enough. The roil of the Obscurus twists in her direction; she has the impression of _fury shock relief_ that is not at all human but is still recognisable, just, as Credence. The darkness shifts, briefly reminiscent of an enormous fist constructed of smoke, and a body falls to the ground, lifeless. It doesn’t wear Grindelwald’s face any more. On the other side of the atrium, another masked follower unveils a false face, distracting Picquery’s attention.

Of the true Grindelwald, Queenie can find no trace.

“Credence,” she says. She wondered what he heard, or saw – what signal he was waiting for – to join the fight. Or perhaps the fight came to him. Ice sinks into Queenie’s bones. How long was she unconscious? “Credence, he’s not here. You need to stop. Grindelwald isn’t here.”

The Obscurus whirls away from her, picking up a screaming witch and tearing off her mask. Queenie knows the face, distantly recognises the mind. They went to Ilvermorny at the same time, in different years. They’ve been to the same shops, probably a few of the same parties. The witch goes abruptly limp. She tumbles down, a broken puppet.

“Credence!” Graves shouts, frantic. “You have to stop! Come down!”

He can’t stop. The air is a storm of living smoke and silver magic, neither ever touching, each raining down death. Grindelwald’s followers send flares of green light into the cloud of the Obscurus; Queenie can feel Credence’s pain and confusion, and moves instinctively forward. He _has_ to come down, before their curses hit hard enough to kill.

“Credence!” she shouts again, desperate. It can’t end like this. “ _Credence!_ ”

The Obscurus twists her way, darting downward, now resembling something like a misshapen bird of prey. It’s trying to elude both the electric brilliance of the Sigyn and the volley of curses, driven to the defensive. As it nears the stairs, Queenie makes up her mind. Credence is in there. He acted to rescue Graves; he can still control the Obscurus, just. He just needs the necessary incentive.

“One, two,” Queenie whispers to herself, and leaps off the edge of the stairs, into the darkness.

She doesn’t hit the ground. The Obscurus catches her up and she hears the flash of Credence’s fear more clearly than she has ever heard anything in her life. She sinks deeper into the dark. Her mind fills with a buzzing so fierce and loud she can hardly bear it, and then…

_**We. Hear. Everything.** _

*

_It’s an ugly night outside – the last petulant sleet of winter in a month that ought to be spring – but under the blankets it’s warm enough to raise a sweat, and Credence is panting for breath, hot gasps against the pillow. If I could, this is where I’d keep him: boneless under the curve of my arm, sliding easily into sleep as if no bad dream is ever going to follow him there._

_That’s all idle fantasising. I have been drilling him in defensive magic for hours today, stripped to shirtsleeves and facing one another across the empty floor. I don’t know how much time we have, so we practice every chance we get. Credence struggles to remember the right incantations, but once he knows how a spell should_ feel, _he doesn’t seem to need the words. Sometimes,_ _when he is_ _exhausted and driven to frustration, I will see the shape of his body begin to blur and his wand looks less like wood than a sixth, stabbing finger. There are scorch marks on the plaster that I’ll have to cover over in the morning. Credence is dangerous; I hope he’s dangerous enough._

_I don’t suppose anyone has tried to teach an Obscurial how to use a wand before. Though Mr Scamander is eager to advise, he can offer only speculation, not facts. His letters, vague as they are, comfort Credence. I think he likes knowing that there is precedent for what he is, that there have been others, even if their lives were all tragedies. Credence is not afraid of sad stories. He is not one himself, any more._

“ _Percival.” He turns in my arms with a sleepy smile directed through a tumble of dark curls. Feather-light fingertips slide up my side. “What are you thinking?”_

“ _That you are unique,”_ _I murmur_ _into the space between his neck and shoulder, “and there is no reason good enough to let you ever get out of this bed.”_

_Credence laughs, delighted and – after everything we’ve done tonight – a little bit scandalised. “You would get bored very quickly.”_

_It’s my turn to roll over, pressing Credence down into the sheets and kissing his doubts out of his mouth. “I don’t think I will.”_ _W_ _hat I’d give for the time to find out._

_*_

_**Voices everywhere. Tongue and teeth, whisper, whimper, scream. Thoughts quick as fishes. Not quicker than us. Every mind is open wide underneath us. We hear** _ _**them all** _ _**.** _

_**The wizard fighting Picquery came all the way from Russia for this fight, swor** _ _**e** _ _**to serve Grindelwald with absolute conviction. He has killed fifteen No-Majs. He wants to kill more. They brought war to his country, with their filthy machines and their barbed wire. They are savages compared to wizardkind. Mind’s on fire, fire, he won’t stop until he’s dead. Unless.** _

“ _ **Stop,” we say. He stops.**_

(Queenie, what have you done?)

_**Apollo Gaunt is fighting with the others, masked, Transfigured. Most of the Aurors he led from Britain are dead at his hand. He regrets having to do it, but that is not the same as feeling guilt. They were sacrifices to the cause, they died for the betterment of the wizarding world. Grindelwald has been wooing him for years, dirty secrets traded for a steady trickle of Ministry files. Gaunt sold out Percival Graves. Yesterday morning,** _ _**he** _ _**met with the Minister for Magic (schoolmate, fellow Prefect, fellow wearer of the Ravenclaw tie) and put him under the Imperius Curse. It might as well have been his hand that signed the papers** _ _**for the New York mission** _ _**, all easy, all neat.** _ _**Gaunt** _ _**has been promised a second war, and this time he means to make his fortune from it.** _

“ _ **Stop,” we say.**_ _ **He stops.**_ _ **They all stop.**_

(Credence, you have to let her go!)

_**Thoughts, thoughts, so many thoughts, wicked and tragic and lost. All the city is thinking, is dreaming. We hear them all. We hear Grindelwald, who is already so far away; he’s running for the Portkey hidden at Gaunt’s hotel, his thoughts quiet as mice.** _

_**We can hear the mice.** _ _**We can hear the owls, the pigeons, the restless cats. We watch the wizard slipping through the streets through a hundred eyes.** _

_**We know what he knows.** _

_**Ariana Dumbledore was an Obscurus. She didn’t know it, none of them knew it, she was the strange little thing with a mind bent wrong, but she could do things when she was sad enough and all she wanted was her brothers to be friends again, with Grindelwald gone. She didn’t know, even he didn’t know, that Grindelwald was a Seer. What would that have changed for her, little Ariana? What did the future mean for her? He was fighting her brothers, she had to make him stop, and she did – she did stop him – she pulled him into darkness, and he** _ **S** **aw** _**.** _

_**Held in the grip of pure magic, the future was an open door in his head, and he’s been waiting his chance ever since to open it again.** _ _**It can only be done with** _ _**an Obscurus. He’s been looking so long,** _ _**tiredbitterlost** _ _**long, he wants his war, he wants Albus to be wrong…** _

_It wasn’t my fault._

_**Liar.** _

*

_Modesty is sitting in the window, folded up tight. She jumps when she hears the door open. I smile, holding up the cocoa, but she doesn’t understand until I give her the mug. “Thank you,” she says shyly, drinking half of it in one go. She eats that way too: waits to make sure it’s not a trick, then gulps it all down before you can take it away. Queenie handles her better. She has a knack for it. I’m more of a clown when it comes to kids – keep ‘em laughing! - but Modesty’s not much of a laugher. There’s times she’s got Credence’s worst pinched look and you can see they had the same mother, because they’ve got the same fears. It’s a damn shame. My ma could be quick with the wooden spoon when she got mad, yeah. She worked hard, never had enough sleep. She loved me, though. Always said I’d make something of myself._

_Well, I’_ _ve made it_ _now! No more days in the canning factory. I’ve got myself a bakery, a gorgeous girl who thinks I’m worth sticking around for, some good friends. They’re kinda weird, but everyone is in this city. There’s a kid in the house already. Hope you’re proud, Ma. We’ll get round to the wedding soon._

_If Queenie comes home. Which she will. Of course she will._

“ _You doing okay?” I take back the empty mug. “_ _If y_ _ou need anything, you just ask.”_

“ _Where’s Credence?” Unerring, that way she has of asking questions I can’t answer._

“ _Sorry, honey, he had to go out.” Didn’t leave a note. Didn’t say a word. Tina wanted to go look for him, but she’s here keeping an eye on us. It doesn’t sit right, being the one who needs looking after. That’s my job. I’m no wizard, though, so I don’t get a say. Besides, there’s Modesty to think about. This is her new home. It should be safe._

_She doesn’t believe in safe places. Her eyes are narrowed, suspicious, looking for the lie. She doesn’t believe in much, this girl, least of all that good things last._

_We’re gonna prove her wrong. Come home, Queenie. Any time now._

*

_**Grindelwald is miles away. That doesn’t mean much to us. We can hear his thoughts like he’s one of the whisperers below. We hear what he hears. He hears what we say.** _

_I’ll be gone before they finish chasing their tails._

_**No.** _ _**Y** _ _**ou won’t.** _

_**We open him up, peel his lies back to show what’s underneath. Wicked boy at Durmstrang, the brightest, sharpest boy they had, but too wicked** _ _**even for** _ _**them. Blunted for a while, he left, found weakness in blue English eyes and stayed to coax them away with him. Here’s his deepest secret: he loved you, Albus. We could twist his heart just so and he would love you enough.** _

_**After Ariana, he left again, went looking for a war and found one. Went looking for a wand and found that too.** _

(We have to do something, Queenie’s up there. Fuck, look at her, is she – what if it’s too late?)

_**He lost his lovely face to a curse gone wrong. It was meant to make him invisible but bleached him out instead. He doesn’t care. He likes it sometimes. A demarcation between who he was and what he is now. He’s the true tongue of wizardkind, saying every word they all pretend they’re not thinking, airing every grievance history sweeps under the rug, and nothing about that is pretty. Grindelwald is the Seer whose powers were unlocked by an Obscurus. His convictions are worse than righteous – they are right. He will have his war.** _

(Credence. I love you. Come down.)

_**Apollo Gaunt sold out Percival Graves, yes. But Grindelwald robbed him. Took his face, his life, and nearly got to keep them. He was so close to keeping it all.** _

(Queenie, if you can hear us, you have to make him stop.)

_**He nearly had Tina. He nearly had Newt.** _

(Please hear me. Come down.)

_**He nearly had Jacob.** _

(Credence, I’m begging you, don’t make me do this.)

_**Never again.** _

(I’m sorry.)

 

*

Queenie becomes aware of her own existence, a slow waking. Her eyes feel strange, lids sealed shut; her limbs are weightless, floating in the darkness as if it is water – and like water, it is receding. Cold seeps in first, followed by a burn of pain spreading across her skin, blazing to such agony that her eyes are shocked open.

It is not dark at all. It is so, so bright.

*

_Did she move? Is she awake?_

_Tina,_ _go. Eat something. Get_ _some sleep._

_Are you going anywhere?…I didn’t think so._

_You’ll have to tell Jacob eventually. And I will have to tell Modesty. If. If it happens._

_I think she can hear me. If anyone could_ _, she would_ _. Queenie? Queenie, it’s_ _Tina_ _. I’m here with Mr Graves. You’re safe. Credence is safe. I need you both to do something for us, okay? We need you to wake up. Please, just wake up._

 

*

Queenie wakes up, and it’s dark again: the ordinary darkness of a night-time room. She’s in her own bed – no, she’s in the bed that used to be hers, in the brownstone. When she turns her head, she sees Credence lying in the other bed across the room, covers pulled up to his chin. They rise and fall with the slow rhythm of his breath. Graves is sitting on the floor, head propped against the mattress, shifting uneasily in a light sleep. Tina is curled awkwardly at the foot of Queenie’s bed.

Sitting up is slow, and painful. Queenie feels less as if she’s suffered an actual injury and more as if she is recovering from the worst case of pins and needles ever known; her skin has the pallour of long illness, or a long time underwater, and every inch of it feels a little raw, almost new. Her head does not so much ache as feel hollowed. Something vast found space there, and now it is gone.

Or perhaps not. Credence stirs on the other side of the room, and Queenie hears him in her head – not the faint chatter that she is used to, like voices on a wireless, but clearer than a spoken voice, as clear as her own thoughts, carrying a familiar tenor that is unmistakably _Credence._ She only realises that it is not one-sided when Credence’s eyes snap open and he sits up, staring at her, his shock reverberating inside her head. _Between_ their heads.

_Credence?_ Queenie thinks, bewilderedly.

_How, how, what did I do,_ Credence thinks, incoherent with confusion and distress.

_What did_ we _do,_ Queenie corrects him, feeling a bit incoherent herself. Curiosity comes out stronger, though. _What do I sound like to you?_

_Like you do when you speak. But different too. Clearer?_ Credence’s hunched shoulders straighten out as his initial panic gives way to consideration. She can hear the shift so clearly it could almost be her own. This will take some getting used to. Assuming, of course, that it lasts.

The conversation has been a silent one, and it’s when Queenie shifts her legs that Tina wakes up. She gives a sort of choked squawk at the sight of Queenie and hauls her into a shaky hug. Graves jerks awake on the floor. He looks up instantly at the bed behind him and Credence leans precariously over the edge so that they, too, can wrap their arms around each other, clutching hard with the delayed terror of a near miss.

Queenie can hear them both – Tina’s mind open and familiar, Graves’ usual unreadable walls giving way with the rush of his relief – but not in the same way she hears Credence. Credence can’t hear them at all, just her. That sense of hollowness she had when she first woke is completely gone. The inside of her head is more crowded than she ever believed possible, every thought and feeling competing for space. It’s worse for Credence, who isn’t used to having anyone inside his head but himself. He’s already getting a headache. Which means Queenie is getting a headache too.

“Oh, _Merlin,_ ” Tina cries, tumbling off the bed and bolting for the door. Queenie has time to blink a couple of times, wonder whether it is worth reaching for the reason, and decide it’s not before the door bangs open again and Jacob is there. He looks like he’s been awake for days, hair unbrushed, eyes rimmed with red, but he’s smiling so wide and his mind is sunshine, a warmth to soak in.

Queenie surprises herself by bursting into tears. In that moment, all she can hear is Jacob’s voice saying her name.

*

There is a small rebel encampment in the brownstone. Tina’s little army of Squibs are out in full force, sleeping in armchairs and on blankets on the floor, taking turns in watching over the invalids, entertaining Modesty and sending away the hopeful newspaper wizards who keep Apparating in the hall to ask for interviews. This is due less to Queenie and Credence’s explosive magical melding ritual, which has been quite effectively hushed up while the relevant parties try to work out exactly what it was they _did,_ and more to the continued presence of Seraphina Picquery.

She and Graves have taken over the kitchen to make plans in. Picquery is much too dignified for catnaps and so keeps refilling her coffee cup with sharp taps of her wand. At one point she and Graves get into a fierce whispered argument and Picquery breaks off what she’s saying to call out, “Goldstein, come and give us your opinion.” Tina gives Queenie a quick wide-eyed look before getting up to share her thoughts on international wizarding law with the President, the Director of Magical Security and the Niffler, who (ever optimistic) is rummaging in the cutlery drawer, looking for treasure.

Several things are explained to Queenie and Credence once they have proven they can stay awake and aware. The battle stopped on their command. Grindelwald’s closest supporters are now either dead or subject to interrogation; Apollo Gaunt is among the dead. Grindelwald himself is gone. Tina came to the MACUSA just before dawn, when Queenie was already hours late, expecting the worst and finding it: Credence lost to his own magic, Queenie a silhouette floating within the Obscurus, Graves and Picquery unable to separate them. In the end, the three of them had risked the most powerful Stunning spells they knew, all hitting at once. It had been enough to shock Credence back to himself, but he and Queenie had been completely unresponsive for a full day afterwards. Tina believed (does not say, but oh, she believed it) that they would never wake again.

But they did wake. And if they are not quite the same, well, they are not the same people they were last winter, and are happier for it. Queenie chooses to be optimistic. Credence can think of many worse things than having her voice in his head, and now he knows, without the intermedium of words, that she can think of many worse things than having his. They will have to experiment with barriers to keep one another from accidental intrusion; Queenie is already familiar with that particular effort and Credence learns fast. They will adapt. They will live.

“The ambassador betrayed you,” Queenie says, when the joint headache has eased enough for serious talk. “The Minister for Magic didn’t. He was under the Imperius Curse.”

“Grindelwald was a Seer,” Credence adds. Graves has an arm around him, as if to hold him up – Credence is not about to fall, but leans in regardless, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. “That was how he did what he did. That’s how he found me.”

“And that’s why he wanted an Obscurus,” Queenie continues. She can tell that this sharing of sentences is beginning to unnerve the others, but they will just have to get used to it. “It was…I can’t describe what it was like. We could hear every mind in the city, I think. If that had been Grindelwald, with his Sight, he would have been all but omnipotent.”

Graves recoils, hold on Credence tightening. “Fuck.”

“Fascinating,” Picquery says, propping her chin on her knuckles and staring at Queenie as if she can see through her skull to the mysterious contents within. “He will try again, then. Credence will have to be kept under guard.”

“No,” Credence interrupts quietly. “He won’t try again.”

“He can’t,” Queenie says. “He’s not a Seer any more.”

Tina frowns. “People don’t just _stop_ being Seers.”

“We stopped him.” Queenie looks at Credence; she does not know exactly how to explain what they did. “We…ripped it out.”

The silence that falls is accompanied by a stillness of thought as that sinks in. Picquery is the first to recover. “You will never admit to that again,” she says simply. “Word of anything that you did goes no further than this room. Is that agreed?”

Credence nods without hesitation. Queenie takes a moment longer to follow suit. The wizarding world is proud of magical invention, but that pride only goes so far. There are things that nobody is supposed to be able to do – and wizards, Queenie knows from experience, do not much like their assumptions being proved wrong.

“The diplomatic situation,” Picquery says, “is a wreck. I’m staying long enough to clean this mess up, then I’m stepping down. I have better things to do that placate purebloods, and if my government is going to be hamstrung by Grindelwald’s sympathisers, I’ll have to deal with him myself. He may have lost his greatest advantage, but we have no reason to think his ambitions have changed and he’s inspired a movement that’s bigger than he is.” She glances at Graves and lifts an eyebrow. “How do you feel about hunting down the forces of evil?”

He smirks at her, tired eyes sparking. “Here I was thinking you’d never ask.”

“The invitation extends to you,” Picquery tells Credence. “It’s going to take a while to clean up my loose ends. You’ll have some time to train, if you want to fight with us.”

Credence meets her eyes steadily. “I want to fight.”

As Picquery speaks she visibly brightens: an Auror again, wand in her hand and a plan in mind. She glances at Tina. “You’re welcome to join us, Goldstein. I’ve seen how good you are in the field, and I’ve had recent personal experience with how stubborn you can be.”

“I. I’ll,” Tina stammers. “Can I – think about it?”

“You know where to find me,” Picquery says. She smiles, and even Queenie has to acknowledge that it is rather devastating. It also looks very much like flirtation. Tina turns pink and temporarily loses the ability to speak. Graves hides a smile, but Credence sees it, so Queenie does too.

That will take _so_ much getting used to.

Jacob is not here. He has the bakery to manage, after all, but Queenie knows there is more to it than that. He is grateful beyond belief that she is safe; and he does not trust his thoughts to be around her, because now he’s recovered from the horror of almost losing her, he’s angry. It is a quiet, uncomfortable feeling in him. Jacob does not like being angry, but it’s not going away and Queenie does not have the least idea what she can say to make it better.

In that moment of darkness and glory, she could have brushed his anger away and Jacob’s love would have been beautifully uncomplicated again. Queenie is desperately grateful she does not have that option any more. She doesn’t quite trust that she wouldn’t take it.

_You wouldn’t,_ Credence says.

_You don’t know that for sure,_ Queenie thinks grimly , on the other side of the apartment. _I maimed a man for life when I had the chance. I took something that made him who he was because he threatened my family._

_Both of us did that,_ Credence thinks, sharper, and underneath Queenie can hear what he didn’t mean to say: _it’s my family too._

She gets up from her chair in the kitchen and goes to the bedroom to curl up beside him, heads pressed together. Some things cannot be said with words, or even thoughts.

Credence takes longer to recover than she does, tiring easily, falling asleep in the middle of conversations and one time narrowly avoiding death by drowning in a bowl of soup. Graves carried him back to bed after that, and stayed with him. When Queenie checked in later, through Credence’s half-open eyes, Graves was sitting at the foot of the bed with his long legs crossed at the ankle and one of Queenie’s forgotten romance novels open in his hand, reading it aloud in a tone that implied he found the entire thing suspicious. “Just so that you know, Summoning spells do _not_ work like that,” he said disapprovingly, and Queenie startled everyone in the kitchen by laughing helplessly into her napkin.

It takes a week before it is judged safe for Queenie and Credence to leave the apartment. Credence goes home with Graves, having first fished the Niffler out of the burrow it had made behind the dresser and returned its hoard of shoe buckles and spoons. Queenie takes a deep breath and Apparates into the alley behind the bakery, bracing herself for the talk that has to be had. She can hear the low hum of Jacob’s concentration already; he’s making bread, which he always finds soothing, but he snaps alert at the sound of the door opening.

“You’re feeling better?” he asks, after a second of hesitation. “How’s…everything?”

‘Everything’ is intended to encompass the mess that is American wizarding politics in the wake of Grindelwald’s escape, along with the wellbeing of the people Jacob doesn’t really know but cares about because Queenie, Tina and Credence care about them. Queenie twists her hands.

“Everything isn’t very good,” she says, feeling close to tears again.

Jacob dusts flour off his hands and comes to her, concern overriding all other thoughts. He makes her sit down. Before he can let go of her arm, Queenie covers his hand with her own and squeezes. “I love you,” she whispers. “I do, Jacob. I want to marry you, I want to live with you for the rest of my life. But I have to protect my family. You see that, don’t you? I couldn’t let Credence be hurt.”

“I know,” Jacob says gently.

“Tell me what I can do to make this better,” Queenie begs. “I’m sorry I scared you. I never meant to.”

“I know that too.” Jacob sighs. He kneels in front of her, letting her squeeze his hand between both of hers. “I don’t really fit in this world of yours, though, do I? What can I do, when you’re getting hurt? All I can do is stand there on the sidelines like a lump.” He smiles painfully. “I love you, princess. But I can’t do that again.”

Queenie tries to answer, to find the words that will change his mind, but she’s already crying too hard to speak. Jacob’s hands cup her face, rubbing away the tears with his thumbs. His sadness mirrors hers, and what makes it even worse is the resignation, built over sleepless hours beside Queenie’s unconscious body. What is the use of reading minds if all Queenie can see is how much she has to lose?

From a distance, she hears Credence tune into her misery. The tentative barriers between them are shot to pieces; Queenie ignores the brush of Credence’s thoughts against hers, locked in the physical reality of the hard kitchen chair and the print of floury fingers on her arm, the helpless leak of tears.

_Queenie,_ Credence says, so much like a shout in her head that she knows he’s saying it aloud (and very loudly) wherever he is. _Queenie, the rules were always wrong._ She catches a jumble of images, all clumsily parcelled together: Tina showing Credence a battered textbook, Graves tipping a vial of potion into whisky and telling Credence _for the headache,_ Jacob stirring a pot at the stove with the single-minded concentration that cooking brings out in him. Queenie sways on her chair. _You can try,_ Credence tells her, believing it so much Queenie’s chest stops shuddering with tears and she sees what all those memories add up to.

Last winter, Queenie would have thought, _impossible._ She is not the same person she was then.

The rules were always wrong.

“Jacob.” She takes his chin in both hands, lifting his face. “You’re right. We can’t do it this way. Just say something for me, okay? Tell me that you want to stay with me. I need to hear you say it.”

He looks at her, perplexed and sad and despite it all, hopeful. “I want to stay with you, Queenie.”

She smiles down at him through the last of her tears. “Well, if you don’t belong in my world, then we’re just going to have to make a new one.” She flicks her wand at the corner cupboard, where she keeps her cauldron and a clutter of boxes and bottles, all the basic ingredients a witch needs to have on hand for emergencies. “Don’t ever tell her I said this, but Tina’s lousy at potion-making. I’ve been choking down her brews for a week. I bet you’d be a natural, though.”

Jacob’s eyes widen. “I can’t do _magic_.”

“You can cook. When it comes right down to it, there’s not a lot of difference.” Queenie is about to break the most fundamental rule in the wizarding world, and it feels wonderful. “Let me show you.”

 

**Epilogue:** **One year later**

“ _Oh, don’t worry, the silly thing always does that around strangers._ _That’s enough, Freddie!_ _”_

“ _Mr Scamander, I am somehow not reassured.”_

Queenie wakes with a smile on her face. The barriers she and Credence have built to protect each other’s privacy soften in sleep, and now that they are in different time zones, there is often a bleedthrough of the waking mind into the sleeping one. Queenie dreamed she was in a large but crowded apartment, familiar from previous nights of transatlantic wandering. There were a collection of potted trees by the windows for a small colony of Bowtruckles to live in and a cat basket by the stove where a pair of drowsing Occamies were curled around each other, a typewriter clacking frenetically by itself on a disastrously messy desk, and the enormous head of a Hippogriff poking improbably through Newt’s open suitcase in the middle of the living room floor.

Graves was nose-to-beak with it, locked in a staring contest that did not look likely to break any time soon. A wave of fondness and amusement that did not belong to Queenie had swept through her, and she is briefly lost when she opens her own eyes to an empty bed and springtime sunlight on the sheets.

She is home. She is in the apartment above the bakery, and Jacob is whistling downstairs with a thin echo keeping tune; Modesty will learn anything that anyone is willing to teach her and right now that is how to whistle ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ and make _paczki_. The house smells divine already with the frying dough. Queenie rolls over, rubbing her face as she re-establishes her own mood, which is still happy, if for different reasons.

The most difficult part of this bond has been the transference of emotions, a back-and-forth that sometimes amplifies and usually exhausts. Queenie has to love Percival Graves now, a little, and her own love has left marks on Credence, who sometimes looks at Jacob and blinks, seeing mental double. It’s a small price to pay for this: to walk downstairs in the soft light of morning, into the kitchen where Modesty is studiously whistling with icing sugar in her hair, and send the moment to Credence with a thought. She gets the flash of his happiness and an answering image of Graves petting the Hippogriff’s neck while Newt looks on beaming like he’s established world peace.

It isn’t always happiness that binds Queenie and Credence, but when it does, they get to share the warmth of the glow.

The spies departed for England two months ago: Picquery, Graves, Credence and Tina. Their mission is to root out Grindelwald’s followers overseas, with Newt as their contact. There has been no sign yet of Grindelwald himself, but the impact of his movement is all too easy to find. Graves and Picquery are rapidly re-establishing their old camaraderie, happy to be out in the field together again. At the same time, Picquery is establishing camaraderie of a very different kind with Tina. Which is apparently amazing and somewhat terrifying, based on the frantic notes Tina keeps writing to ransack Queenie’s supply of relationship advice.

Of course, there is Newt to factor in as well. Queenie wonders if Tina has worked out how she feels about him yet, and how that compares to the casual, glamorous fling she’s whirling in the middle of. Once Queenie would have been able to predict which Tina would choose. Now, she’s not so sure. Queenie has a newfound delight in the unexpected these days, and Tina’s absence is eased by seeing her sister through Credence’s eyes. Tina talks to him sometimes like she is talking to them both. She has always been better at adapting than she gives herself credit for.

Promises of Portkey visits have been made, though Queenie is taking those with a pinch of salt. Travel between England and America is complicated, with diplomatic relations still so frosty. In the meantime, owls arrive every other day with letters for Modesty, full of descriptions of London and magic and aeroplanes, all equally as awe-inspiring to Credence. He tried a fire message once as well, but at the sight of her brother’s face in the coals Modesty started screaming about Hell and it took hours to calm her down. They have not tried that again.

Modesty writes her own halting little replies to each letter, telling Credence about the recipes Jacob is teaching her and the potion-making classes Queenie holds twice a week for Jacob and a steadily increasing number of Squibs. Tina has turned foreign correspondent for her little underground newspaper and now Queenie and Jacob have been talked into writing for it too, with an advice column they take turns at answering. _So that everyone can benefit, not just me,_ Tina coaxes in her letters. Queenie doesn’t really need that much persuading. She is, after all, a witch; she knows what power there is in words. And she finds that she has a great deal to say.

Maybe they have averted Grindelwald’s war by stripping out his Sight. Maybe they haven’t. But whatever comes next, they are going to be ready.

She doubts very much that it is going to be ready for them.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this will be in two chapters, but we shall see - at the rate it's growing, it may end up as three.


End file.
